News Round-Up

• “White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooter’s manifesto revealed” – The gunman who opened fire outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner called himself the “Friendly Federal Assassin” in a chilling manifesto he wrote before the attack, reports the Mail.
• “Shooter’s family reveals his plans to ‘fix’ the world” – The family of Cole Tomas Allen have revealed he penned a radical manifesto before the attack laying out his plans to fix a broken world, says the Mail.
• “Boat migrant, 14, who raped teen girl allowed to walk free by soft-touch judge” – An Iranian boy who arrived by small boat and raped a fellow pupil three months later has walked free, leaving the victim’s family “furious” and “outraged”, according to GB News.
• “Net zero migration will not make Britain poorer” – The Oxford Economics claim that cutting net migration to zero would blow a £700 billion hole in the public finances is taken apart by David Shipley in the Telegraph.
• “Starmer ‘planning to sack Reeves if local elections are disaster’” – Labour insiders say Sir Keir is ready to sacrifice his Chancellor in a sweeping post-election reshuffle if the party takes a mauling on May 7th, according to GB News.
• “Starmer vows to be PM into the 2030s as elections disaster looms” – Sir Keir insists he will fight the next election and complained that loyal MPs are not being heard, says the Mail.
• “Starmer blissfully unaware of how much everyone loathes him” – The Prime Minister has given a Sunday interview making claims so staggering that even his own MPs can barely keep a straight face, writes Dan Hodges in the Mail.
• “Angela Rayner eyes clear run as tax saga will end ‘within weeks’” – Allies of the former Deputy PM are confident the HMRC investigation into her stamp duty affairs will be wrapped up before the local elections, clearing the way for her political comeback, reports the Times.
• “Burnham allies urge Rayner to strike Blair-Brown style leadership pact” – Andy Burnham’s allies have urged Angela Rayner to do a Blair-Brown deal: back him for leader, take the deputy role then inherit Downing Street in due course, according to the Telegraph.
• “Police to question No 10 over McSweeney’s missing phone” – Scotland Yard has reopened its investigation into the theft of Morgan McSweeney’s phone and will quiz Downing Street officials about tracking data that could prove crucial to the Mandelson inquiry, says GB News.
• “I was a judge. We must not be silenced over the vandalism of juries” – In the Sunday Times, a former High Court judge with 40 years in the criminal courts warns that plans to curb jury trials amount to the destruction of the one part of British justice once considered untouchable.
• “Lord Hermer insulted British war heroes” – Following his collapsed war crimes case against British soldiers, Lord Hermer has launched a bitter attack on the very troops his Iraqi clients falsely accused, reports GB News.
• “Hermer and Starmer’s sinister legal cult has rotted our democracy” – From Phil Shiner’s paid Iraqi fixers to Hermer’s courtroom lawfare against decorated veterans, a network of human rights lawyers has spent two decades using British institutions to wage war on the British Army, writes Tom Tugendhat in the Telegraph.
• “Lord Hermer is gifted £1.5 million plot of land by wife’s parents” – The Attorney General and his wife have been handed two barns and a plot of land in affluent West Sussex by his in-laws in a deal that neatly sidesteps inheritance tax, reveals the Mail on Sunday.
• “Three historic private schools close after combined 333 years” – Three long-established independent schools have shuttered simultaneously, adding to the growing casualty list from Labour’s VAT raid on the private education sector, reports the Wiltshire Times.
• “We’re on the brink of a global recession, but it’s not Iran we need to worry about” – The biggest threat to global financial stability may not be war with Iran but the AI revolution itself – an uncomfortable irony for those banking on it to rescue growth, says Liam Halligan in the Telegraph.
• “Britain’s shoplifting epidemic hits record high of 500,000 cases” – Police recorded 530,000 shoplifting offences last year – up 48% on pre-pandemic levels – with retailers warning the true figure is far higher, according to the Mail.
• “The ‘skint’ mums and dads teaching benefit families how to cash in on ‘freebie’ Britain” – “Skint” social media influencers are coaching families on benefits to squeeze maximum value from state hand-outs, reports the Telegraph.
• “Hogwarts Express train risks being derailed by health and safety” – The famous steam train used in Harry Potter has already been pulled from the rails and now faces forced retirement after regulators refused to exempt its 70 year-old carriages from door-locking rules, says the Telegraph.
• “On the political death drive” – In Cafe Americain, Oliver Vollbrecht examines how the modern Left has developed a cult of destruction, prioritising the tearing down of institutions over any coherent vision of what should replace them.
• “Car bomb explodes in ‘attempt to kill police officers’” – Suspected New IRA terrorists hijacked a delivery driver at gunpoint, forced him to drive a gas cylinder device to a Belfast police station and detonate it in a residential area – with police calling it a miracle no one died, reports GB News.
• “Gazans say children have been ‘raped by Hamas-affiliated clerics’” – Filmed testimony obtained from inside Gaza shows children making disturbing allegations of rape by Hamas-affiliated clerics, with parents intimidated into silence, according to the Mail.
• “Son of senior Iranian official flaunts private jet” – The son of an Iranian regime official has sparked fury by posting videos of himself boarding a private jet with a £2,690 Louis Vuitton bag while ordinary Iranians face hardship, says the Mail.
• “Trump faces three tough choices on Iran war after rejecting offer” – Having batted away Iran’s latest peace overture, Trump is now left weighing three difficult options, writes Emma Richter in the Mail.
• “Immigrants who express political opinions can now be denied green card” – Trump’s new guidance tells immigration officers to reject green card applicants who have spread antisemitism or other politically objectionable views on social media, says the Mail.
• “Who is Billy Bostickson?” – On Substack, Jim Haslam profiles the anonymous online anarchist who scooped the CIA on Covid lab leak intelligence and went on to brief the FBI.
• “UK Biobank failures expose the permanent cost of sharing genetic and medical records” – The custodians of half a million Britons’ genetic data have suffered 198 security failures in 11 months – and the volunteers who trusted them have no way of getting their DNA back, writes Ken Macon in Reclaim The Net.
• “Starmer faces fresh Lords defeat over teen social media ban” – The Prime Minister’s plan to phase in a social media ban for under-16s over three years has been dismissed as “not serious” by critics in the Lords, who look set to hand him yet another embarrassing defeat, reports the Telegraph.
• “The Right-wing case for social media” – Conservatives should be the last people cheering on state censorship of online platforms, warns Alex Yates in the Critic.
• “UK should forego North Sea Oil expansion because nobody needs oil and gas” – The head of the International Energy Agency has told Britain to abandon North Sea expansion on the grounds that nobody needs oil and gas anymore – a claim that will land oddly with anyone paying their energy bills, says Eric Worrall in Watts Up With That?
• “European energy policy is accelerating towards the wall” – Faced with clear evidence their energy policies are heading the wrong way, European leaders have responded by pressing harder on the accelerator, notes Evert Doornhof in the Liberum.
• “Leftists fake tears about high energy prices, but ignore the foreign-funded lawfare” – Progressives wringing their hands over energy bills are ignoring the foreign-funded legal campaigns that blocked domestic production and drove those prices sky-high in the first place, says Larry Behrens in Watts Up With That?
• “It’s the cold, stupid!” – Multiple peer-reviewed studies confirm that cold kills around 20 times more people than heat – a finding that sits awkwardly with the relentless focus on warming as the great killer, writes P. Gosselin on No Tricks Zone.
• “Local 10 examines why expensive electric buses sit in disrepair in Miami-Dade, Broward” – Ninety-six million dollars’ worth of electric buses are sitting idle across South Florida, with some dumped in landfill and others parked at an air force base, according to Local 10.
• “Ed Miliband’s crusade against gas will help no one” – Eco-zealots have misunderstood the meaning of energy security, says Dillon Smith in CapX.
• “SNP candidates vow to fight for ‘bodily autonomy’ of trans people” – A majority of SNP candidates have vowed to fight for the “bodily autonomy” of trans people and to ban “conversion practices” if they are elected to Holyrood, reports the Sunday Times.
• “Kezia Dugdale, incoming Stonewall chair, says sorry after backlash over J.K. Rowling remarks” – The former Scottish Labour leader has grovelled to trans activists after expressing respect for J.K. Rowling, says the Guardian.
• “Chernobyl show given warning over ‘imitable dangerous behaviour’” – A new Chernobyl documentary has been slapped with a trigger warning that it “contains easily imitable dangerous behaviour”, prompting widespread bafflement ahead of its release, reports the Mail.
• “How we use our enemies” – In the New Conservative, Stewart Slater unpicks how people routinely mistake neutral behaviour for proof of persecution.
• “You can smell the alcohol when people are in between votes” – Green Party MP Hannah Spencer tells PoliticsJOE she objects to MPs having a drink, even as her party wants to legalise heroin and crack cocaine.

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