Month: January 2023

Under government proposals, thousands of laws are due to expire automatically after December unless specifically kept or replaced.

It has prompted concerns that important legislation could lapse by accident.

Labour wants to push the end-of-year deadline back to 2026, arguing it will ensure employment rights are retained.

And several Tory backbenchers, including former Brexit secretary David Davis, are backing an attempt to give MPs a greater say over what is scrapped.

The suggested changes will be discussed later when the Retained EU Law Bill, introduced under Liz Truss, returns to the House of Commons.

So far, the government has identified more than 2,400 EU laws that were copied over to UK law to minimise disruption to businesses when the UK officially left the EU in 2020.

This official estimate is expected to increase significantly, with a further 1,400 previously unidentified laws recently unearthed by the National Archives.

The total has prompted concerns at the workload required within the civil service to review all the legislation.

The bill would also give ministers wide-ranging powers to change or get rid of EU laws, prompting criticism that important changes in a wide range of areas could be made without proper scrutiny.

Labour has put down several amendments to exclude various EU laws from the December 2023 deadline, including rules on airline compensation, toy safety, transporting animals, and equal treatment for part-time employees.

Meanwhile, several Conservatives, including Mr Davis and former cabinet minister Sir Robert Buckland, are backing a move to give MPs more control over which EU laws are ditched.

Under their plan, the government would have until the end of September to draw up a list of laws it wants to scrap, with MPs then able to add or remove legislation from the list after a vote.

Mr Davis – a former Brexit secretary and leading figure in the campaign to leave the EU – said he wanted MPs to be in the driving seat, not government departments.

The aim of the Leave campaign had been to “give power to Westminster, not to Whitehall”, he told the BBC.

Official estimates indicate that removing or replacing EU-era laws by the December deadline will require the government to pass around 1,000 new pieces of legislation.

The government says this process is an opportunity to make regulations more business-friendly, and rejects the suggestion that environmental or employment protections will be watered down.

But green groups in particular have warned about the difficulty of reviewing the large number of EU-era environmental laws, covering areas such as mollusc farming, border checks on imported salamanders, and rules for importing hay.

EU laws covering financial services are exempted from the deadline as they have been carved out into another bill making its way through the Commons. The same is expected for EU legislation affecting VAT and customs.

Some of the EU laws affect areas areas governed by ministers in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland – but the UK government is yet to publish a breakdown.

The SNP-led Scottish government and Labour-run Welsh government have both expressed concerns about the bill, and recommended that their respective parliaments withhold their approval.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who promised during his unsuccessful summer leadership campaign to review or scrap EU laws within 100 days of taking office, is facing pressure from some Brexiteers not to change the end-of-year deadline.

Former Brexit secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg, who introduced the bill, wrote recently that the “inheritance of the EU regulatory system is now an urgent problem across our economy”.

The bill will go through its final stages in the Commons on Wednesday. It will then go to the House of Lords, where it is expected to face significant opposition.

Rain and snow were expected Monday overnight and into early Tuesday morning in parts of the state.

Although weather should improve this week, many areas are currently at risk of floods and landslides.

Storms have battered California in recent weeks, flooding communities and forcing evacuations.

The back-to-back deluges have eroded roads and felled trees, making each successive storm more liable to cause serious damage as soils weaken.

One to three feet (30 to 91cm) of new snow fell in parts of California’s Sierra Nevada range over the weekend.

As of Monday, eight million people remain under flood watch on California’s central coast, and more than 38,600 customers in the state remained without power on Monday, according to poweroutage.us.

The Sacramento office of the National Weather Service (NWS) said that “periods of moderate to heavy snow will continue into Monday”. Meanwhile, heavy rain is forecast for Southern California throughout Monday into early Tuesday.

Governor Gavin Newsom urged Californians to remain vigilant and exercise “common sense over the course of the next 24 to 48 hours”.

Skies will begin to look sunnier starting Tuesday, according to the NWS, but a final gasp of wet weather will hit some areas on Wednesday and into Thursday.

US President Joe Biden declared a major disaster in California – the country’s most populous state – on Saturday night.

The scale of the damage caused by a once-in-a-generation deadly “parade of storms” has started becoming clear in California.

A total of 19 people have been confirmed dead, while a 5-year-old boy is missing after getting swept away by floodwaters.

Between 26 December and 9 January, parts of California saw up to six times more rain than usual, according to the NWS.

Last week, some areas of Santa Barbara received more than 410mm (16in) of rain in two days.

Storms have lashed coastal cities such as Santa Cruz and San Francisco, opening sinkholes in roads and cutting power to thousands of homes.

The rain has raised the water level in rivers across the state. Many low-lying areas along the Salinas River Valley were evacuated.

The population in 2022 – 1.4118 billion – fell by 850,000 from 2021.

China’s birth rate has been declining for years, prompting a slew of policies to slow the trend.

But seven years after scrapping the one-child policy, it has entered what one official described as an “era of negative population growth”.

The birth rate in 2022 was also down from 7.52 in 2021, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, which released the figures on Tuesday.

Deaths also outnumbered births for the first time last year – China logged its highest death rate since 1976 – 7.37 deaths per 1,000 people, up from 7.18 the previous year.

Earlier government data had heralded a demographic crisis, which would in the long run shrink China’s labour force and increase the burden on healthcare and other social security costs.

Results from a once-a-decade census announced in 2021 showed China’s population growing at its slowest pace in decades.

An ageing population and falling birth rates have been slowing down other developed economies in Asia, such as South Korea and Japan.

China’s population trends over the years have been largely shaped by the controversial one-child policy, which was introduced in 1979 to slow population growth.

Families that violated the rules were fined and in some cases even lost jobs. In a culture that historically favours boys over girls, the policy had also led to forced abortions and a reportedly skewed gender ratio boys from the 1980s.

The policy was scrapped in 2016 and married couples were allowed to have two children. In recent years, the Chinese government also offered tax breaks and better maternal healthcare, among other incentives, to reverse or at least slow the falling birth rate.

But these policies did not lead to a sustained increase in the births – experts say this is because policies that encouraged childbirth were not accompanied by efforts to ease the burden of childcare, such as more help for working mothers or access to education.

In October 2022, Chinese president Xi Jinping made boosting birth rates a priority. Mr Xi said in a once-in-five-year Communist Party Congress in Beijing that his government will “pursue a proactive national strategy” in response to the country’s ageing population.

Spectators were initially permitted to bring the flags into Melbourne Park on the condition they do not cause “disruption”.

But the organisers reversed that decision on Tuesday, after fans displayed a Russian flag during a match between Ukraine’s Kateryna Baindl and Russian Kamilla Rakhimova.

The ban is effective immediately.

“We will continue to work with the players and our fans to ensure the best possible environment to enjoy the tennis,” Tennis Australia said in a statement.

Ukrainian fans say they called police and security to the first-round match on Monday, claiming Russian supporters were “taunting” Baindl.

“This is profoundly unsafe, the war is ongoing,” one fan told local newspaper The Age. “It’s a small court, the guys were extremely close to the players, so there was an element of what I felt was intimidation.”

But one of the Russian men involved told The Age his group had simply been cheering their countrywoman on.

“People can view that as being obnoxious but we were just being your normal supporters. There was no ridiculing or disrespect.”

Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia and New Zealand had earlier called on Tennis Australia to take action.

Russian and Belarusian athletes have not been able to play under their countries’ flags in several sports, including tennis, since the invasion of Ukraine began in February last year.

While players from the two countries are competing under a neutral white flag during the Australian Open, they were banned from playing at Wimbledon altogether in 2022.

Organisers were subsequently fined and the tournament was stripped of its ranking points by the Association of Tennis Professionals and Women’s Tennis Association. The WTA said equal opportunities for players to compete as individuals had to be protected.

The Victorian state government on Tuesday said Tennis Australia had made the right decision.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is abhorrent,” acting premier Jancinta Allan said. “It breaches international human rights obligations. It’s been enabled and supported by Belarus.”

“[This] sends a very, very clear message that human rights are important, whether it’s in sport, or more broadly in our community.”

The ban comes after Ukrainian tennis player Marta Kostyuk said she would not shake hands with opponents from Russia and Belarus who she believes have not done enough to condemn the invasion.

Nearly 50 Tory MPs wanted to amend the Online Safety Bill to introduce two-year sentences for managers who fail to stop children seeing harmful material.

The government had been facing defeat, with Labour also supporting the move.

Under a deal with the rebels to stave off defeat, ministers have now promised to introduce similar proposals.

It is the third time that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has backed down in the face of rebellious backbenchers since taking power in October.

It follows concessions late last year on the issues of housing targets for councils and restrictions on onshore wind farms.

The bill would oblige managers of sites hosting user-generated content, including social media sites, to take “proportionate measures” to stop children seeing harmful material.

The draft law says this could be through measures such as age verification, taking content down, and parental controls.

Currently the bill would only make managers criminally liable for failing to give information to media regulator Ofcom, which is set to gain wide-ranging powers to police the internet under the new law.

Making managers liable for a failure to comply with broader safety duties in the bill was rejected after a consultation ahead of the bill’s introduction, which concluded it could make the UK tech sector less attractive.

Companies failing in their legal duties, including protecting children, could be fined up to 10% of global revenue.

However, the Tory rebels had argued that only personal liability for company bosses would ensure the child safety provisions are effective.

After talks with Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan over the weekend, the rebels have agreed to withdraw their amendment, which was due to be voted on in the Commons on Tuesday.

In exchange, the government has now agreed to introduce an amendment of its own along similar lines when the bill gets to the House of Lords – giving ministers more time to work on the wording.

The government’s amendment has not yet been published, but ministers are expected to set out further details on Tuesday.

It is understood that Ms Donelan had wanted to ensure any amendment to the bill was legally effective and did not create unintended consequences.

Sir Bill Cash, a leading Tory rebel, told the BBC the agreement with ministers was a “huge step forward”, adding that senior managers in the sector “will not want to run the risk of going to jail”.

Other Conservatives supporting the amendment include former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, and other ex-ministers including former home secretary Priti Patel.

The Online Safety Bill was introduced in March under Boris Johnson, and has been repeatedly altered during its passage through Parliament.

Its progress was further delayed last month when the government decided to make more changes to the bill.

After its passage through the House of Commons, it is expected to face a lengthy journey through the House of Lords.

Mursal Nabizada, 32, was one of the few female MPs who stayed in Kabul after the Taliban seized power in August 2021.

Her brother and a second security guard were wounded in the attack on Sunday.

Former colleagues praised Ms Nabizada as a “fearless champion for Afghanistan” who turned down a chance to leave the country.

Since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, women have been removed from nearly all areas of public life.

Kabul police spokesman Khalid Zadran said security forces had started a serious investigation into the incident.

Former lawmaker Mariam Solaimankhil said Ms Nabizada was “a true trailblazer – strong, outspoken woman who stood for what she believed in, even in the face of danger”.

“Despite being offered the chance to leave Afghanistan, she chose to stay and fight for her people,” she wrote on

Ms Nabizada, from the eastern province of Nangarhar, was elected as a member of parliament from Kabul in 2018 and stayed in power until the Taliban takeover.

She was a member of the parliamentary defence commission and worked at the Institute for Human Resources Development and Research.

Hannah Neumann, a member of the European Parliament, said: “I am sad and angry and want the world to know!” in response to the killing.

“She was killed in darkness, but the Taliban build their system of gender apartheid in full daylight.”

Abdullah Abdullah, a former top official in Afghanistan’s former Western-backed government, said he was saddened by Ms Nabizada’s death and hoped the perpetrators would be punished.

He described her as a “representative and servant of the people”.

Many women who had prominent professional jobs in Afghanistan after the US-led invasion two decades ago fled the country after the Taliban returned to power.