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Nurses in England belonging to the Royal College of Nursing union rejected the government’s pay offer and hurried to go on strike over the first May bank holiday and thereafter on chosen dates till Christmas. Members of Unison voted to accept the NHS pay offer. More than 196,000 hospital appointments were cancelled because of the junior doctors’ strike in England the week before. Strikes by public-sector workers contributed to the complete lack of growth in GDP in February, according to the Office for National Statistics. Humza Yousaf, the First Minister of Scotland, declined to suspend Nicola Sturgeon, his predecessor, from the Scottish National party as police investigated its finances. Colin Beattie MSP, the SNP Treasurer, was arrested by Police Scotland and released without charge as investigations continued. Margaret Ferrier MP is to appeal against a proposed 30-day ban from the House of Commons for having travelled to Glasgow from London on a train in September 2020, though she had received a positive result from a Covid test; she was elected as an SNP MP, but lost the whip; more than ten days’ suspension allows a recall petition
seeking a by-election.

Inflation fell from 10.4 to 10.1 per cent, buoyed by the price of chocolate. Voters in local elections on 4 May would have to show photographic identification; 22 forms of ID were authorised including an Icelandic passport and an expired older person’s bus pass. Protestors invaded the Grand National course, upsetting the horses, one of which later fell and died; protestors invaded the snooker world championships. Brecon Beacons national park said it would in future only use the name Bannau Brycheiniog (pronounced ban-aye bruch-ay-nee-og).

The government cancelled the building of planned so-called smart motorways (which allow traffic to run on hard shoulders). Existing smart motorways (10 per cent of England’s network) would remain. Michael Gove, the Housing Secretary, stopped the building of 165 houses by Berkeley Homes in the Crane Valley, Kent, because the development was not ‘sensitively designed having regard to its setting’. De La Rue, the banknote printers, said world demand is at its lowest level in 20 years; it would renegotiate its bank loans.

Abroad

Scores of civilians were killed in fighting in Khartoum between the Sudanese army, headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who has ruled the country since a coup in 2021, and the rival Rapid Support Forces, 100,000 strong, headed by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti. The Islamic State group killed 26 people searching for truffles in the Syrian desert. New Australian government figures put Melbourne’s population at 4,875,400 – 18,700 more than Sydney’s.

Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, aged 21, was charged with having posted, since December, in an online gamers’ chat group called Thug Shaker Central, classified documents that could cause ‘exceptionally grave damage’ to national security. The documents mostly concerned the war in Ukraine. The G7 group of industrialised countries asserted its support for Taiwan and for sanctions against Russia over Ukraine in reaction to suggestions by President Emmanuel Macron of France that the EU should distance itself from tension between America and China. President Vladimir Putin of Russia visited occupied parts of Ukraine’s Kherson region, the Kremlin said. Vladimir Kara-Murza, 41, a Russian-British politician, was sentenced to 25 years in a ‘strict regime correctional colony’ on charges of treason relating to his opposition to the war in Ukraine. Poland and Hungary banned the import of Ukrainian grain to protect their farmers from cheap competition. Germany closed its last nuclear power stations, leaving coal to produce more than a third of its energy. The launch of Elon Musk’s 390ft Starship rocket was postponed when a valve went wrong.

Four people were shot dead and 28 wounded at a 16th birthday party in Dadeville, Tallapoosa County, Alabama, the 162nd mass shooting in the United States this year. A black boy, Ralph Yarl, 16, was shot in Kansas City, Missouri, after he rang the wrong doorbell by mistake, but survived. An 11-year-old boy was stabbed in the lung and liver at a dollar store at Mill Creek, Washington state, after calling a 29-year-old man an NPC (non-playable character, a video gaming term). An explosion at South Fork Dairy Farm near Dimmitt, Texas, killed 18,000 cows. CSH/>