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President Joe Biden of the United States visited Northern Ireland, shook hands with party leaders, talked with Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (though not about a trade agreement), and went on to the Republic of Ireland, for the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. The accountancy firm Johnston Carmichael resigned as auditors to the Scottish National party. Its decision coincided with a police search of the SNP’s headquarters in Edinburgh following the arrest and release without charge of Peter Murrell, the party’s former chief executive and the husband of Nicola Sturgeon, who was the SNP leader and first minister. Tony Danker was sacked as director-general of the Confederation of British Industry after ‘complaints of workplace misconduct’ against him. The main railway link between London and Oxford was expected to be closed until at least June because brickwork had crumbled at the Nuneham viaduct.

Junior doctors in England went on strike for four days; Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, said that a 35 per cent pay rise demanded by the BMA was unrealistic. In a week 1,056 migrants crossed the Channel in small boats; of the 45,755 who arrived last year, 215 have been deported. A million smokers will be given a free vaping starter kit by the government to encourage them to give up tobacco; at the same time, it launched ‘bold new measures to combat rising levels of youth vaping’. More than 1,000 people descended on Margam, Port Talbot, for a rave on the night before Easter.

Labour posted advertisements online carrying a photograph of the Prime Minister next to a headline: ‘Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t.’ It added: ‘Under the Tories 4,500 adults convicted of sexually assaulting children aged under 16 served no prison time.’ Stanley Jones, the printmaker and co-founder of the Curwen Studio, died aged 89. Poultry and the pelicans in St James’s Park would be freed from bird-flu detention from 18 April, except in Northern Ireland, where their internment would continue.

Abroad

China held military exercises that surrounded Taiwan. On a state visit to China, President Emmanuel Macron of France, referring to the war in Ukraine, told Xi Jinping, the Chinese ruler: ‘I know I can count on you to bring Russia to its senses.’ He was accompanied on his visit by Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission. In Beijing, the foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia held talks for the first time since 2016. About 10,000 people fled to Thailand from Shwe Kokko in Burma, where Chinese-owned casinos thrive, as Karen rebels clashed with Burmese forces. Italy called a six-month state of emergency after 3,000 migrants arrived in boats in three days; 28,000 such migrants had arrived in Italy this year.

Dozens of classified US Defense Department documents about the war in Ukraine appeared on the internet; opinions varied about what to make of those chosen to be leaked by unknown hands. Ukraine’s energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, said the country would be able to resume energy exports to the EU despite more than 1,200 missile and drone strikes by Russia on its electricity network since the war began. Israeli police separated people praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem from Palestinian Muslims at the al-Aqsa mosque, where some had barricaded themselves in. Israel hit military targets in Syria in response to six rockets fired into the Golan Heights, territory it controls. Israel also made retaliatory strikes against southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. A British-Israeli woman and her two daughters were shot dead in a suspected Palestinian attack while driving in the Jordan Valley in the northern West Bank. The Dalai Lama hugged a boy in public and said: ‘Suck my tongue’, putting out his tongue. In Nicaragua, Catholics were prevented from holding public Easter processions by the regime of Daniel Ortega. Brian Hood, the Mayor of Hepburn Shire Council in Victoria, Australia, was considering legal action after an advanced chatbot, ChatGPT, falsely claimed he was imprisoned for bribery when he was the one who exposed the crime. Samsung Electronics is cutting the production of memory chips after estimating a 96 per cent (£366 million) drop in its quarterly operating profit. In India, more than 13,000 cattle were killed by trains in 2022, according to government data – an increase of 24 per cent since 2019. Tupperware doubted ‘its ability to continue as a going concern’.