United Kingdom

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/48654977

A British judge has sentenced four Palestine Action protesters as terrorists, handing them custodial sentences ranging from four to eight years.

The unprecedented ruling came despite jurors convicting them of criminal charges not connected to terrorism during the prosecution.

On Friday, the presiding judge, Justice Jeremy Johnson, added a “terrorism connection” to their offences.

In a preliminary ruling in March 2025, Johnson found an "appearance" of a terrorism connection in the case, as he said the activists were attempting to influence the Israeli government by restricting their access to weapons. This information was withheld from the jury who convicted them.

Met Police say they have been arrested for supporting a proscribed terror group

Public understanding of UK cage use is low, but among people who are aware of 'enriched' colony cages, 94% are strongly against them.

At a motion for a vote of no confidence against Arwa Elrayess, the first Palestinian president of the University of Oxford’s debating society, Oxford Union, she was accused by a 20-year-old student of contributing to “an atmosphere of hostility and harassment”.

In a video of the forum last week at the prestigious university, which was shared with Al Jazeera, Elrayess is seen replying to Ben Ashworth, “Not just in my career within the union but in my existence as a Palestinian, there seems to always be this post-mortem vilification of Palestinians.”

The room was full of onlookers as Elrayess, who became the head of the Oxford Union late last year, stood tall in a green sequinned dress.

“Palestinians, when they talk, are for some reason a danger. Our very existence is something that is scary,” she added.

The motion was filed after screenshots of text messages from Elrayess were quoted in outlets including The Telegraph and the BBC as saying that the Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel on October 7, 2023 was “proportional”.

The text also said groups branded as terrorists were often later “lauded as heroes”.

As Palestinians, we refuse to see our stolen land traded in a city that was the centre of our people's dispossession for more than a century

Petition closes on 10 December 2026.

Previously, the NHS Service Standard held that “public services are built with public money, so unless there's a good reason not to, the code they're based on should be made available for other people to reuse and build on.” This is what the current policy should be reverted to.

NHS England has issued guidance, called SDLC-8, which requires that all source code repositories be private from the 11th of May, 2026, unless there is an exceptional need, approved by the Engineering Board.

The Free Software Foundation Europe have warned that open repositories allow security researchers to inspect and report vulnerabilities, and that de-publishing code does nothing to prevent attackers from analysing already-deployed systems, binaries, or previously copied source code.

A new Which? investigation has found potentially lethal knock-off chargers still being sold on online marketplaces seven years after the consumer champion first exposed the danger they pose to UK consumers.

More than half of cheap charger bought from Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, Temu and others fail safety checks or miss legally required product markings.

Archived version

Here is the link to the original study by the consumer group Which?

Cheap phone chargers sold on some of Britain’s biggest online marketplaces can explode, catch fire or electrocute users, according to safety tests by Which?.

An investigation by the consumer group found that nine out of fifteen USB phone chargers bought from retailers including Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, B&Q Marketplace and Debenhams Marketplace failed electrical safety tests. Some were found to contain lumps of modelling clay to make them feel more substantial.

Every charger tested was also found to be missing legally required information on its packaging, documentation or the product itself, meaning none could legally be sold in the UK.

The findings are likely to increase pressure on ministers to use new powers to force online marketplaces to take greater responsibility for the safety of products sold by third-party agents.

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The findings come despite repeated warnings about unsafe electrical products sold online. Which? first highlighted dangerous chargers on major marketplaces in 2019 and has since carried out a series of investigations into potentially hazardous products sold through third-party platforms.

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Which? is calling on the government to use powers contained in the Product Regulation and Metrology Act, which received royal assent last year, to impose explicit legal duties on online marketplaces to ensure products sold through their platforms are safe.

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The legislation allows ministers to introduce new requirements through secondary legislation but the government has yet to bring forward detailed rules. A consultation on potential changes was launched recently.

Consumer groups argue that the delay is allowing unsafe goods to continue reaching British households.

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Amazon said customer safety was a top priority and that it had removed the products highlighted by Which?. AliExpress said both identified products had been removed and affected customers would be informed of the risks. Debenhams said it had removed the listing and was contacting customers to offer refunds.

eBay said that all of the products identified in the investigation had already been removed through its existing safety processes before Which? shared its findings and pointed to measures that it said prevented 21 million potentially unsafe listings from appearing on the site last year.

Temu and Shein said they had removed or suspended the relevant listings while reviewing compliance with British labelling and documentation requirements.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/53496010

Point 16 in the joint statement:

[Australian and UK] ministers ... expressed their concern about the role of China's economic support in allowing Russia's illegal war to continue. They called on China to prevent its companies from supplying dual-use components that sustain Russia's defence industrial base.

Ministers urged China to cease support to Russia's war effort and, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, with a particular responsibility to uphold the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, to use its substantial influence with Moscow to help bring an end to the war.

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Dual-use items, including electronic components or satellite imagery, do not meet the threshold for lethal weapons but are still supplies that assist Russia in bolstering its industrial base.

In a subsequent press conference, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the talks emphasised both Australia and the UK’s “unwavering support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s unjustified invasion”.

“We will stand with Ukraine, and we will continue to do so for as long as it is attacked,” she said.

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The Australian and UK Ministers noted the increasing scale and severity of hostile activity by states, their proxies and non-state actors. This includes cyber activities undertaken by China-based information security companies, and recent attempts by Russia to interfere in democratic elections through its proxy organisations, the Social Design Agency and ANO Dialog. 

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Far-right activist Tommy Robinson has claimed “Russia is not the enemy of Britain” after he travelled to Moscow and met with Elon Musk’s father, Errol.

Elon Musk has long been a supporter of Robinson, with both men calling for people to take to the streets in response to the knife attack in Belfast.

Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, shared a list of places where protests were said to be taking place at 7pm on Tuesday following the Belfast attack, saying: “The whole of the United Kingdom is hitting the streets tonight at 7pm following yet another invader attack on our people.”

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Web Archive link

alternative video upload: https://streamable.com/e/x8htk0