United Kingdom

Zack Polanski has been cleared by an ethics inquiry looking into complaints that he did not pay council tax while living on a houseboat.

A report by the Greater London authority’s monitoring officer found that the circumstances of the Green party leader’s living arrangements were beyond its scope and he had therefore not breached the code of conduct for London assembly members.

The complaints from Labour and the Conservatives alleged that Polanski had breached the requirements of the ethics code because he had not paid council tax while living on a houseboat in east London from 2022.

After more than 17 hours of deliberation, a jury at Birmingham crown court has failed to reach a verdict over whether four pro-Palestine activists committed criminal damage at an arms factory.

Iain Evans, Hana-Yun Stevens, Frank Sherman, and Hisham Alkhamezi were each accused of criminal damage at a factory owned by Moog, a US aerospace firm, in Wolverhampton.

During the trial, the jury saw footage from helicopters and CCTV cameras which showed the defendants crashing through the site’s front gate and damaging solar panels on its roof.

Prosecution lawyers presented this as an open and shut case given the defendants admitted in court to occupying the roof in order to shut down the factory’s production line. They said the trial “is not about Israel, it’s not about Palestine… It’s simply about whether they unlawfully damaged property”.

But the jury was also shown a social media post demonstrating that the activists’ goal was to disrupt the supply of UK-made fighter jet components to Israel.

Palestine Action ban upheld by the Court of Appeal as Co-founder Ammouri vows to challenge proscription at every possible avenue