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One person was taken to hospital in critical condition after a house fire in Winnipeg’s West Broadway area Thursday evening.
Firefighters responded to the fire in a 2½-storey house on Young Street after 5:30 p.m., the city said in a release.
Several fire trucks and an ambulance could be seen on the scene as of around 6 p.m., with heavy black smoke coming out of the home near the intersection of Young and Broadway. The fire was declared under control at 6:22 p.m., the city said.
Firefighters rescued one person from the home, with everyone else having safely self-evacuated, the release said.
A second person and a firefighter who was injured at the scene were also taken to hospital in stable condition, the city said.
The fire is under investigation and no damage estimates are available. Emergency social services responded to help those displaced by the blaze.
WATCH | Firefighters tackle fire in West Broadway:
Winnipeg firefighters battle Young Street blaze
Smoke choked parts of downtown Winnipeg early Thursday evening, as crews fought a fire in a home on Young Street. One firefighter was injured and two other people were taken to hospital, including one in critical condition.
Rachel Reeves is under pressure to reassure MPs over the state of the UK’s public finances, amid concerns that the rising cost of special educational needs and disabilities (Send) could leave a significant hole in the government’s financial buffer.
Meg Hillier, the chair of the all-party House of Commons Treasury committee, said the chancellor should make clear her long-term plans for the £6bn-a-year Send bill as uncertainty grows over how it will be accounted for at the end of the decade.
Reeves, who is due to appear before the committee next month, said in a letterto MPs that she plans to delay a decision until next year.
City analysts said financial market investors would be concerned if some or all of the £6bn Send annual cost was deducted from the budget surplus, which the chancellor more than doubled in last November’s budget to £22bn to cushion the UK against volatile government bond markets.
The spat between MPs and the Treasury comes after the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said the £6bn Send bill was unaccounted for at the budget and expected increases to the bill over the next decade posed a risk to the public finances.
Ministers said they will clear about £5bn of the debt up to 31 March this year, although councils must agree to revise how they offer Send services under plans expected to be outlined in an imminent white paper.
It is unclear how billions of pounds of expected Send overspends between April 2026 and April 2028 will be handled. Ministers said they would “continue to take an appropriate and proportionate approach, though it will not be unlimited”.
English councils have seen the cost of providing Send services rise as the number of pupils that qualify for extra help has increased, and the mainly private providers have raised charges.
The excess costs have been rolled over with the Treasury’s blessing as debts at arm’s length, or off balance sheet, to protect spending on other services. Successive chancellors have delayed allocating the costs since 2014 in a manoeuvre known as a “statutory override”.
In the November budget, Reeves said that from 2028-29 the cost of Send services would be taken over by Whitehall, but refused to say which department would account for the spending.
Hillier said: “It’s extremely important that we can trust that the Treasury is being transparent on its spending plans. As the OBR has identified, this is an obvious risk to the headroom the chancellor created for herself at the budget.
“The chancellor will be appearing in front of the committee in March and we will continue to seek answers.”
The OBR estimated that the backlog of historical spending on Send, mostly paid for from borrowed funds by local authorities, will reach £18bn by 2028-29.
The chancellor said in a written response to Hillier: “From 2028-29, once the statutory override ends, future funding implications for Send will be managed within the government’s overall departmental spending limits. Specific department budgets from 2028-29 onwards will be confirmed at the 2027 spending review.”
The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, is due to show how the government plans to make Send services more effective. However, critics say she is planning to ration access by pupils, allowing the OBR to revise down its projections at the next budget.
Luke Sibieta, a research fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said the government might be able to reduce annual spending, but this would probably be at the margins.
He said: “To fill the £6bn gap, the government has three main options. First, it could slow the growth in Send spending through reforms to the system.
“Second, it could top up the overall schools budget by finding the money elsewhere in the government’s budget.
“Third, it could reduce mainstream school funding to pay for high needs funding. To illustrate the impact of these choices, £6bn is equivalent to about 9% of the overall schools budget in 2028-29, or about 11% of the mainstream schools budget in that year.”
A fourth option would be to increase borrowing, reducing the government’s financial buffer.
Ruth Gregory, the deputy chief UK economist at the consultancy Capital Economics, said the Send budget posed a “clear risk to the projections for public spending”.
She said heavy commitments to increase spending across a range of Whitehall departments meant there was a growing risk of the government “eating up its headroom” more broadly, not least from a pledge to increase defence spending.
Philip Shaw, a senior analyst at Investec, said: “I don’t think the markets would panic if a large proportion of the £6bn could not be saved and is added to borrowing. But investors would be very concerned.”
Guardian international correspondent Luke Harding meets artist Julia Po in Kyiv as she resorts to using bubble wrap to keep heat inside her apartment. Ukrainians have struggled throughout an exceptionally harsh winter as Russia repeatedly targets energy facilities, plunging entire cities, including the capital, into blackouts
On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” host Anderson Cooper said that, after the drawdown of immigration officers in Minnesota, there are “thousands” of officers “who probably couldn’t make it on a police force, probably couldn’t make it in the military. Some of them, obviously, have been serving for a long time, but some of them have 47 days of training because of the 47th president.”
While speaking with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Cooper said, “What happens to all these thousands of masked men — we don’t know their identities — who probably couldn’t make it on a police force, probably couldn’t make it in the military. Some of them, obviously, have been serving for a long time, but some of them have 47 days of training because of the 47th president. What happens to these thousands of people? They have to be deployed somewhere.”
Klobuchar responded, “Well, that’s our concern. After they put $75 billion extra into this budget, making them bigger than the FBI, making it bigger than many militaries across the world, they are now unleashing them on other cities. So, I would hope the next follow-up from Director Homan would be the training. I believe we should take the excess money, it should go into local law enforcement. Literally, that $75 billion could pay for three years of those tax credits to protect people’s premiums under the Affordable Care Act, something this administration wouldn’t do. You add to that that the deployment of 3,000 ICE agents in Minnesota cost, at a minimum, $18 million a week, 4 million-some on hotel rooms a week, the cost of the salaries, the lost business that we have of small businesses. And when my colleagues and friends across the country say, what can we do to help now? I say, come to our beautiful state.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday asked a court to revoke the Israeli citizenship of two Palestinian men convicted of terrorism offenses.
The effort appears to be the first use of a law enacted three years ago allowing the revocation of citizenship and subsequent deportation of Palestinian citizens who were convicted of certain violent crimes such as terrorism and received financial support from the Palestinian Authority as a reward.
Netanyahu filed court documents arguing that the severity of the crimes, along with payments the men reportedly received from a Palestinian Authority fund, justify pulling their citizenship and expelling them from the Jewish State.
The prime minister has long claimed the fund rewards violence, including attacks on civilians.
TRUMP SAYS HE WOULD ‘ABSOLUTELY’ REVOKE CITIZENSHIP FROM NATURALIZED CRIMINALS — IF HE HAS THE AUTHORITY
Palestinian men are released from Israel’s Ofer Prison near the West Bank city of Ramallah, July 4, 2024.(AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
But Palestinian officials have contended that it is a safety net for the broad cross‑section of society with family members in Israeli detention. They also accused Netanyahu of focusing on the relatively small number of beneficiaries who carried out the attacks.
When the law passed, critics argued that it allowed Israel’s legal system to treat Jewish and Palestinian people differently. Civil rights groups said that basing a deportation law on Palestinian Authority payments effectively excluded Jewish Israelis, including settlers convicted of attacks against Palestinians, from the threat of losing their citizenship, as the statute targeted people of a certain race.
Netanyahu said this week that the government launched proceedings against the two men and that similar cases would be brought in the future.
TRUMP MEETS NETANYAHU, SAYS HE WANTS IRAN DEAL BUT REMINDS TEHRAN OF ‘MIDNIGHT HAMMER’ OPERATION
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked a court to revoke the Israeli citizenship of two Palestinian men convicted of terrorism offenses.(YAIR SAGI/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Israeli officials said Mohamad Ahmad, a citizen from Jerusalem, was convicted of “offenses that constitute an act of terrorism and receiving funds in connection with terrorism.” He allegedly received payment after he was sentenced in 2002 for a shooting attack and served 23 years before his release in 2024.
Mohammed Ahmad Hussein al-Halsi was sentenced in 2016 to 18 years behind bars for stabbing elderly women. He also allegedly received payments while in prison.
Ahmad would be deported immediately, while al-Halsi would be removed upon his release, as individuals are subject to removal to Gaza once their sentences are complete under the 2023 law, which applies to citizens or permanent residents convicted of “committing an act that constitutes a breach of loyalty to the State of Israel,” including terrorism.
When the law passed, critics argued that it allowed Israel’s legal system to treat Jewish and Palestinian people differently.(REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/Pool/File Photo)
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The general director of Israel’s Adalah legal center, Hassan Jabareen, called the move to use the law “a cynical propaganda move” by Netanyahu. He said stripping citizenship violated the most basic principles of the rule of law, including by acting against people who have completed prison sentences.
“The Israeli government is attempting to strip individuals of the very foundation through which all rights are protected, their nationality,” he said on Thursday, according to The Associated Press.
Sir Keir Starmer should make tackling misogyny the sixth key mission of his government, Harriet Harman has said.
The former Labour cabinet minister told our political editor Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast that the work so far to tackle it is “just not good enough”, and women’s voices need to be respected in government.
Her comments come after the most difficult week of Sir Keir’s premiership that saw him fighting for his political future.
Two of his closest advisers, as well as the nation’s most senior civil servant, have left Downing Street in less than a week as he has sought to regain control.
The fallout from Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador, as well as the revelation that the prime minister knew his former communications chief, Matthew Doyle, had an association with a convicted paedophile before nominating him to the House of Lords, saw Sir Keir accused of prioritising a “boys club” culture over the views and experiences of women.
For the first time since taking office in July 2024, he addressed a meeting of the Women’s Parliamentary Labour Party in which he promised that culture change in his government is coming.
Sir Keir Starmer: ‘Matthew Doyle did not give a full account of actions’
Speaking on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Baroness Harman said he needed to go much further in making tackling misogyny a priority of his government, suggesting that he make it the sixth headline aim of his administration, alongside economic growth, expanding clean energy, fixing the NHS, making the streets safe, and breaking down opportunity barriers.
She told Beth Rigby: “I suggested that – you know, Keir Starmer has got these five missions – that we make a sixth mission of actually sorting out misogyny and culture change.
“And I think that there is a recognition now that it’s not just good enough to – sometimes people have said, ‘Keir has said something on one day, and then he is moved on to something else on the following days’ – and certainly there’s a lot going on, but this has got to be seen through.”
Women ‘not part of the decision-making’
The senior Labour peer also argued that Lord Mandelson would not have been made the UK’s ambassador to the US if a woman had been in the room, given his known links to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
“It wouldn’t have been set aside as something that could be brushed past and then just crack on with the appointment,” she said.
“The problem about misogyny is not just the discrimination that’s meted out to women around and about, but it’s also you make bad decisions because you’ve only got one view in the room – men’s views – and they don’t cognise issues in the way.”
PM fights back after ‘near political death’
Baroness Harman also said the phrase “in the room” is “quite bad” because more senior men will make a decision, and then point to the more junior women to be able to say, “see, there’s a woman in the room”.
“Well, she is in the room, but she’s not part of the decision-making,” she continued.
“Actually it’s about partnership in decision-making. And that’s what they’ve got to aim for – not just to get women in positions, not just to get women in the room, but to have real equality of decision-making and respect for what women need to contribute for the government to actually get itself on track.”
Inquiry needed into ‘UK’s Epstein’
Former Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson also noted that the women abused by rich and powerful men have not seen justice done.
Baroness Harman echoed former prime minister Gordon Brown’s call for the police in the UK to investigate the trafficking of women, and called for a “proper public inquiry” into the more than 400 allegations of sexual misconduct against the now deceased former Harrods boss Mohamed al Fayed.
She said: “I met on Tuesday this week with some of the victims of al Fayed, and they were saying [that] to see on television minister after minister, everybody’s saying, ‘we’ve got in the forefront of our mind these women and girls, the ones that are in America’, and they were saying, but what about us? What about your own Epstein, which is al Fayed?”
There also needs to be “a total feminist reset of Number 10”, and a female first secretary of state (most senior cabinet minister below the prime minister) to “drive forward culture change across government”, Baroness Harman concluded.
This article was first published in The Conversation UK’s World Affairs Briefing email. Sign up to receive weekly analysis of the latest developments in international relations, direct to your inbox.
Before he sent his war machine into Ukraine nearly four years ago, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, talked of the need to rid the country of the “neo-Nazi cabal” which was holding it hostage and perpetrating a “genocide” of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.
Putin has doubled down on this regularly during the conflict, refusing to recognise Ukraine’s sitting president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a legitimate negotiating partner and repeatedly calling for elections. He seems to have found a receptive ear in Donald Trump, who has repeated this call several times, usually after a phone chat with the Russian leader.
Now it’s being reported that Zelensky is planning for elections and a referendum on the Trump peace proposal, after the US insisted he do both by May 15 or lose US security guarantees. Zelensky has repeatedly pointed out that the Ukrainian constitution bars elections while martial law is in effect.
It’s easy to see why. As it stands, 20% of Ukraine’s territory is occupied by Russia. Do the people living on that land get a vote? How about the millions of displaced people – either in Ukraine or in the enforced diaspora? How to organise ballots for the hundreds of thousands of troops on active duty? The logistics are mind-boggling.
But it’s not just logistics. Stefan Wolff, an expert in international security at the University of Birmingham, and Tetyana Malyarenko of the University of Odesa present five reasons why holding a poll and referendum are a problem, given the present circumstances.
On the face of it, they argue, it feels as if the US president is once again coming up with a plan that favours Russia over Ukraine. But given the impossibility of organising these votes under the present circumstances, let alone providing for what would happen if, as seems likely, the people vote for Zelensky and against the Trump peace deal, this might actually play into the hands of Kyiv and its allies. Apart from anything else, the process will buy them some time to come up with a new strategy that will take into account Washington’s role as the most unreliable of partners.
Read more:
Five reasons Trump’s plan for Ukrainian elections and a peace referendum will only prolong the war
Having said that, the phrase “if the people vote for Zelensky” is doing some heavy lifting here. The fact is that, four years into an existential struggle, Ukrainians are exhausted and morale is taking a beating in the face of relentless Russian bombardment. Zelensky, who was voted into power with 74% of the vote in 2019 on a platform of fighting corruption has seen some of his closest political allies embroiled in massive corruption scandals.
The fact that the most recent scandal, which saw his chief of staff resign, related to allegations of graft involving Ukraine’s biggest energy supplier was particularly damaging, given that many Ukrainians are living without power in the coldest winter in a decade, thanks to Russian bombing.
So Zelensky’s reelection is not a foregone conclusion. In fact, two of his close associates – Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the former chief of Ukraine’s armed forces and now ambassador to the US, and Kyrylo Budanov, who the Ukrainian president recently appointed as his chief of staff – would both be popular candidates. Neither has said they would run for office, but what politician ever does say that – until they do?
Jennifer Mathers, an expert in Russian and eastern European politics at Aberystwyth University, takes us through the possible challengers.
Read more:
Ukraine: if elections are held this spring, who might be the next president?
The Epstein files
To Washington, where members of Congress have started to sift through some of the 3 million documents from the “Epstein files” released by the Department of Justice at the end of January. Observers have commented that, unlike in Europe, where the fallout has included considerable political splashback for some important people, reaction in the US – so far at least – has been comparatively muted.
Of course, the unredacted files have only just been made available to US lawmakers. So it’s hard to gauge how people are going to react when big names begin to be linked with sleazy acts – whether that might be sexual, political or business-related.
Releasing the files is a gamble for the US Department of Justice and the attorney-general, Pam Bondi, writes Katie Pruszynski, an analyst of US politics at the University of Sheffield. While the potential for scandal is huge, the US public is having to digest so many other stories. This year alone, the US has conducted a raid on Venezuela and abducted its president. There have been threats against Greenland and Canada. The activities of ICE and other immigration agencies in US cities, particularly in Minneapolis where two people have been shot dead, have also rightly dominated headlines.
US attorney-general, Pam Bondi, testifies before a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing as Epstein survivors look on. AP Photo/Tom Brenner
On top of that, millions of people have seen their health insurance premiums skyrocket after the subsidies established under Obamacare lapsed on January 1. People may simply not have the mental bandwidth to take it all in.
But all this might change once the unredacted files are made public. The key thing Republicans will be hoping for is that any furore surrounding the Epstein scandal will die down before the midterm elections in November.
Meanwhile, as Pruszynski notes, Epstein’s victims – many of whose names were not redacted, despite the US Congress passing a law to that effect – are still waiting for justice.
Read more:
Epstein files: why the Trump administration is taking a big gamble by releasing millions of documents
The release of victims’ names raises an interesting side issue: who decides what information is released and what is redacted? Matthew Mokhefi-Ashton explains the competing legal principles which balance the public’s right to know with people’s right to privacy.
Read more:
Epstein files: who decides what information is released to the public?
Hard times in Havana
When the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was taking questions after the raid on Caracas on January 3, he appeared to relish the idea of the US turning its attention to Cuba, commenting that: “If I lived in Havana, and I was in the government, I’d be concerned – at least a little bit.” His boss appeared to rule out direct intervention, at least for now, saying: “Cuba is ready to fall … I don’t think we need any action. Looks like it’s going down. It’s going down for the count.”
He may not be far off the mark, given that Cuba is fast running out of oil. The situation there is so parlous that at least one air carrier, Air Canada, has cancelled all flights to Cuba because it can’t be sure that its aircraft would be able to refuel. This is a disaster. Cuba is heavily dependent on tourism for the foreign currency is so desperately needs.
Since Trump returned to power a year ago, the US has made it nigh on impossible for Cuba to source enough fuel to meet its energy needs. Now he is essentially saying the communist government of Miguel Díaz-Canel must negotiate a deal (on American terms) or else.
But whatever Rubio, who has nursed a career-long obsession with his parents’ home country of Cuba, may want to see, achieving regime change on the Caribbean island will not be easy, writes Nicolas Forsans of University of Essex. Forsans sketches out what a US deal with Cuba that falls short of replacing the government might look like.
Read more:
The US is starving Cuba of fuel – here’s what a deal between them could look like
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New Universal Credit claimants will receive lower health element payments of £217.26 per month from April, while existing claimants and those with severe conditions remain protected at £429.80
Linda Howard Money and Consumer Writer
04:00, 13 Feb 2026
People with the most severe, lifelong conditions, those nearing end of life, and all existing Universal Credit health claimants will continue to receive the higher rate.(Image: Kirsty O’Connor/PA Wire )
Welfare reforms aimed at “rebalancing the benefits system” and supporting more people into employment took a step forward when Universal Credit legislation was presented in Parliament. The UK Government criticised the system inherited from the Conservatives, stating that individuals receiving Universal Credit due to health reasons are paid over twice as much as a single job-seeking person, without being provided with adequate support to transition closer to – or directly into – work.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) announced that the reforms, which will be implemented in April, will address these ‘perverse incentives’. This will be achieved by introducing a reduced Universal Credit health element rate of £217.26 per month for new claimants, compared to the existing higher rate of £429.80.
However, those with the most severe, lifelong conditions, those nearing end of life, and all current Universal Credit health claimants will continue to receive the higher rate.
In order to provide the support ‘they’ve long been denied’, the DWP stated that the UK Government is investing over £3.5 billion in employment support by the end of the decade. This ensures everyone affected by the changes to Universal Credit will be offered personalised assistance to access the skills they need to progress, secure good jobs, and enhance their living standards – contributing to a growing workforce and a thriving economy for the future.
In line with the UK Government’s commitment to addressing the cost of living, nearly four million households on the standard rate of Universal Credit will experience the first sustained above-inflation increase to their benefit, reports the Daily Record.
This uplift equates to roughly an additional £295 this year for a single person aged 25 or over, which is expected to rise to £760 by the end of the decade, ensuring those seeking and in employment have more financial leeway as they strive to progress in their careers.
Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden commented: “The benefits system we inherited was rigged with the wrong incentives and wrote people off instead of backing them. We are changing this. These reforms put more money in the pockets of working people on Universal Credit, while ensuring those who can work get the support they need to do so.
“By boosting the standard allowance and investing in proper employment support, we’re building a welfare system that rewards work and offers people a route to a better future.”
The DWP also confirmed the presence of over 1,000 Pathways to Work advisers in Jobcentres across Scotland, England and Wales, providing personalised assistance to individuals on health-related benefits with no obligation to work – many of whom previously lacked support. The DWP reported that ‘tens of thousands’ of claimants have already availed themselves of this support, with an estimated 65,000 people set to benefit within this financial year.
The UK Government insists it’s making good headway on its pledge to provide bespoke assistance to everyone impacted by the Universal Credit shake-up.
These fresh initiatives form part of a broader package designed to ‘meet sick or disabled people where they are’. WorkWell is currently being implemented nationwide across England, targeting support for as many as 250,000 additional individuals, whilst Connect to Work aims to deliver tailored assistance to 300,000 people throughout the coming five years.
The DWP stated: “With 2.8 million people currently out of work due to long-term sickness, these measures are central to the government’s Plan for Change to break down barriers to opportunity and get Britain working. By supporting more people into work and reducing the health element for new claimants, the reforms are set to save taxpayers £950 million by 2030/31 – delivering fairness for working people and taxpayers alike.”
Responding to the forthcoming changes, Warren Kirwan, Media Manager at disability equality charity Scope, cautioned: “These cuts to universal credit will only make it harder for disabled people to get into work. The health element of universal credit only exists because it’s more expensive and often takes longer for disabled people to get into work.
“We urge the government to properly listen and engage with disabled people, to build a welfare system that supports disabled people and addresses the extra costs they face.”
