Ten Things You Need to Know Today: 25 November 2022

1. Historic nurse strike agreed

Nurses are to strike for two days next month in what is expected to be their biggest walkout in the NHS’s history. The Royal College of Nursing announced strikes involving members in England, Wales and Northern Ireland on 15 and 20 December, saying it had been given no choice after ministers would not reopen talks, but the government said the 19% pay rise demanded was simply unaffordable. Nurses will still provide emergency care, but routine services will be hit. The absence of thousands of nurses “could mean thousands more patients remain stuck in hospital for want of help to discharge them”, said The Telegraph.

Why nurses are taking historic strike action

2. Gove faces PPE questions

Michael Gove is under pressure to properly explain his role in the government’s award of large PPE contracts to a company that was first recommended to him by the controversial Tory peer Michelle Mone. The minister’s account that he referred all offers to civil service channels “appears at odds” with previously released email correspondence, said The Guardian. Mone and her children secretly received £29m from the profits of a PPE business that was awarded large government contracts after she recommended it to ministers.

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3. New Covid-like virus in China

A new Covid-like virus with the potential to infect humans has been identified in bats in China. After taking samples from 149 bats across Yunnan province, scientists identified five viruses “likely to be pathogenic to humans or livestock”, including a bat coronavirus closely related to both Sars-Cov-2 and Sars. Prof Eddie Holmes, an evolutionary biologist and virologist at the University of Sydney, said “this means that Sars-Cov-2-like viruses are still circulating in Chinese bats and continue to pose an emergence risk”.

SEP 21: How new evidence suggests Covid-19 jumped from animals to humans multiple times

4. Trump sued under new law

A writer has sued Donald Trump for allegedly raping her in the 1990s. E Jean Carroll is among the first to sue under the Adult Survivors Act, which came into effect on Thursday. The new legislation “allows a one-year period for victims to file sexual assault lawsuits in New York over claims that would have otherwise exceeded statute limitations”, said the BBC. Carroll accuses Trump of raping her in the dressing room of a New York department store in the mid-1990s. The former president has denied the allegations against him.

5. Foreign students face crackdown

Foreign students may be barred from Britain unless they win a place at a top university and will have fresh restrictions on bringing family members with them after the number of dependants entering the UK almost tripled in a year. International students “are expected to be the main target of Rishi Sunak’s efforts to reduce immigration”, said The Times. The PM is under pressure after it emerged that total immigration reached an estimated 1.1m in the year to June.

Does the UK need higher levels of immigration to thrive?

6. Anwar made Malaysian PM

Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim has been sworn in as prime minister, ending days of post-election uncertainty. Anwar and his rival, the former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin, both failed to win a majority, but the constitutional monarch, King Al-Sultan Abdullah, appointed Anwar after consulting several lawmakers. Anwar’s appointment caps a “three-decade political journey from a protege of veteran leader Mahathir Mohamad to protest leader, a prisoner convicted of sodomy, and opposition leader”, said CNN.

7. Musk to offer amnesty to banned accounts

Twitter will provide a “general amnesty” to some suspended accounts from next week, said Elon Musk. His announcement came after a poll asking Twitter users whether accounts that had “not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam” should be let back on the social media platform. Accounts suspended on Twitter include Donald Trump’s former aide Steve Bannon, far-right UK commentator Katie Hopkins and David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan chief. Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, a media watchdog told Sky News that reversing the suspensions would mean “turning Twitter into a one-stop shop for operationalising doxxing and harassment, and an engine of radicalisation”. Musk, the world's richest man bought Twitter for $44bn (£36.3bn) last month.

Elon Musk completes Twitter takeover

8. ‘Downblousing’ to be outlawed

“Deepfake” pornography and “downblousing” will be made illegal when a bill returns to parliament next month, the government has announced. The Online Safety Bill aims to tackle the rise in manipulated images, where a person’s face is put on someone else’s body, as part of a crackdown on the abuse of intimate pictures. Prof Penney Lewis of the Law Commission, which recommended the new offences, said: “We are pleased that the government will take forward our recommendations to strengthen the law.”

9. Crisis to dampen Black Friday

Retail experts believe that the cost of living crisis may weaken demand on this year’s Black Friday. Although more people are expected to visit shops during the first festive season since Covid rules were lifted, “purse strings will be tighter” as prices are rising at their fastest rate in 41 years, said the BBC. Meanwhile, Black Friday shoppers have been warned that air fryers have become a new favourite for online scammers. The Telegraph said that con artists are targeting the rising popularity of energy saving goods such as air fryers, electric blankets and personal heaters.

Bleak warning to Black Friday bargain hunters

10. New wallpaper row in Downing Street

A fresh row has broken out about renovations in Downing Street after Jeremy Hunt said in a speech that Liz Truss had “painted over” Boris Johnson’s purported gold Downing Street wallpaper. Supporters of Truss then told The Times she did not even get round to any decorations in Downing Street during her brief time in power. However, said The Telegraph, others who worked on the campaign “insisted she had repainted the walls of the flat”, while another set of anonymous sources insisted there was not even any gold wallpaper in the first place.

How ‘Great Exhibition’ texts triggered a Boris Johnson corruption row