Downing Street says EU’s suggestion of UK joining agreement would not cross its ‘red lines’ for closer ties

Here is Downing Street news release on the government’s plans to limit the extent to which judicial review can be used to hold up infrastructure projects. The plans will cover England and Wales.

The RSPB , which describes itself as the UK’s largest nature conversation charity, has accused Labour of going back on its pre-election promises to protect nature. Beccy Speight, the RSPB chief executive, said:

The PM claims to ‘clear a path’ for building, but this move runs the risk of bulldozing through our chances for a future where nature, people, and the economy all thrive. We know people want bold action on the climate and nature crises, which was Labour’s election platform, and this rhetoric has them veering wildly off course.

We all know that nature underpins economic growth - that is why government and the environment sector has been actively working together, to try and unlock better outcomes for both planning and nature - yet this rhetoric flies in the face of that collaborative spirit.

If we want to grow the economy and fund vital public services, then we have to better balance environmental and community interests with the benefits of development, and do so in a clear and timely way. Reducing the scope for vexatious and unmerited legal challenges, whilst retaining a right to appeal, is a very positive step in achieving this.

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TDs gather in parliament for ceremony which had been due to take place yesterday

Donald Trump should be wary of giving Vladimir Putin too much prominence by agreeing to an early summit on Ukraine, Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski argued in Davos.

Here is his argument in full:

President Trump has started well by recognising that it is Putin who needs to shift his position, not Ukraine .

If I can make one suggestion to the new administration, coming from the depths of experience of a country that warned the rest of the world about Putin and was not always listened to, it is this: this is not the Putin that Trump knew in his first term.

I think the main thing is to engage with him. When there are concerns or issues raised about what the new administration will do I think the best thing is to go to Washington and discuss.

Back in 2017, some allies thought we should just freeze our relations with the US, do almost nothing, and hope things would improve after the next elections.

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Driver in Stalowa Wola described fearing he had hit person after he saw body in road

A funeral home in Poland has apologised after a body that it was transporting fell out of a hearse and into traffic.

Polish media reported that a man was driving down a street on Friday in Stalowa Wola, a city in south-eastern Poland, when he saw a sheet on his car window. When the sheet slid down, he saw a body lying on the road. For a moment the driver feared that he had hit the person.

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Researchers hope to uncover how people died and how diseases have developed over 1,000 years

Deep beneath the streets of Paris, the dead are having their last word. They are recounting 1,000 years of death in the city: how many are ­buried in the labyrinth of tunnels that make up Les Catacombes , what killed them and how the diseases that may have led to their demise have ­developed over the centuries.

In the first ever scientific study of the site, a team of archeologists, anthropologists, biologists and ­doctors is examining some of the skeletons of an estimated 5-6 ­million people whose bones were literally dumped down quarry shafts at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th.

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Unique experiment in German-language public broadcasting 3sat faces pressure from populist right

In many countries around the world, breakfast TV means cele­brity interviews, soap operas and last night’s football highlights. On the German-language channel 3sat this Sunday morning, it means a one-hour philosophical discussion on trauma psychology, followed by a book review programme and a classical concert by the Munich Radio Orchestra.

The collaboration between public broadcasters in Austria, Germany and Switzerland is a unique experi­ment in pan-European broadcasting that has defied doubters for almost four decades: highbrow television.

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Italy’s ‘angel of death’ was imprisoned and demonised by the press before her convictions were overturned. Now the expert who came to her defence has turned his attention to Lucy Letby’s case

‘It was a terrible sensation when I heard the sentence: life.” It was 11 March 2016 and Daniela Poggiali had just been confirmed as Italy’s “angel of death”. Less than 18 months after she had first been arrested , in October 2014, the nurse was now the country’s most infamous killer, convicted of killing one elderly patient and suspected of dozens of other murders.

“I struggled to rationalise it,” she says, “I just thought they were grabbing a crab.” (This is a curious Italian phrase that roughly translates as doing something irrational or idiotic.)

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Sunday’s presidential election and EU referendum takes place amid concerns over interference from Moscow

Moldovans head to the polls on Sunday for a presidential election and an EU referendum that will mark a pivotal moment in the tug-of-war between Russia and the west over the future of the small, landlocked south-east European country of fewer than 3 million people

The pro-western president, Maia Sandu, hopes to advance her agenda by winning a second term and securing a “yes” in a referendum to affirm EU accession as a “irreversible” goal in the constitution.

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World Without End topped bestseller lists but was criticised for embracing nuclear power

In 2019, France’s best known climate expert sat down to work with its most feted graphic novelist. The result? Perhaps the most terrifying comic ever drawn.

Part history, part analysis, part vision for the future, World Without End weaves the story of humanity’s rapacious appetite for fossil fuel energy, how it has made possible the society people take for granted, and its disastrous effects on the climate.

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Motorist accused of deliberately targeting 27-year-old Paul Varry in road rage incident on Tuesday

A motorist accused of deliberately running over a cyclist in a Paris road rage incident has been formally put under investigation for murder and remanded in custody.

The 52-year-old SUV driver, named only as Ariel M, is accused of deliberately targeting the cyclist, who was named by the Paris public prosecutor’s office as Paul Varry, 27.

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