Dozens handed life peerages in apparent concession, enabling their return to red benches

Dozens of hereditary peers whose seats have been abolished have had their lawmaking powers restored as Keir Starmer seeks to accelerate changes to the House of Lords.

It is understood that 15 Conservative hereditary peers, two Labour and nine crossbenchers have been handed life peerages, enabling their return to the red benches.

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Coroner says none of the five civilians killed in incident in Belfast during Troubles should have been shot

British army soldiers “lost control” and used force that was “not reasonable” in the killing of five civilians in Northern Ireland in 1972, an inquest judge has ruled.

Four of the victims – two teenagers, a father of six and a Catholic priest – posed no risk when they were shot in the Springhill and Westrock areas of west Belfast on 9 July 1972, Mr Justice Scoffield said on Thursday.

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• Iran’s participation in doubt following US/Israel attacks

• Team scheduled to play in Los Angeles and Seattle

• Potential last-32 match versus USA in Dallas

Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, has repeated his belief that Iran will take part in the World Cup this summer despite the federation failing to attend congress in Vancouver.

A three-man delegation representing the Iranian Football Federation flew to Toronto on Tuesday, but one of their number was denied entry to Canada, with the two others declining to attend congress in an apparent act of protest.

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Decision follows backlash from Italian government and European Commission

The jury of the Venice Biennale has quit just days before the prestigious art exhibition was due to begin, amid a row over the decision to allow Russia to participate.

The resignation of the five-member international jury was announced late on Thursday in a brief statement by the Venice Biennale organisers, and came a day after the Italian culture ministry sent inspectors to Venice in search of information about the decision to allow Russia to have a pavilion at this year’s event.

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The AI boom is worsening a global memory chip shortage, which Samsung predicts will continue into 2027

Samsung Electronics on Thursday reported record quarterly profit driven by a 49-fold jump in chip income, saying it expects a severe supply shortage to deepen next year as clients spend on AI, driving up prices of its memory chips.

A boom in the construction of AI datacentres has spurred Samsung and chipmaking peers to allocate production capacity to advanced chips that Nvidia uses in its so-called AI accelerators. Even so, chipmakers are struggling to meet demand while the move also squeezes the supply of conventional chips.

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Brendan Carr claims agency’s renewal order is strictly related to investigation into network’s DEI initiatives

Brendan Carr, the Trump-picked chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), denied speculation that the agency is forcing ABC to apply early to renew licenses for its eight owned and operated local television stations as punishment for an ill-timed joke made last Thursday by late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel.

The decision drew backlash from industry group National Association of Broadcasters, whose chief executive called it “nearly unprecedented”; from Republican Senator Ted Cruz , who said the agency should not operate as “the speech police”; and from press freedom organizations that have derided it as an example of a disfavored network being punished for editorial purposes.

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The stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green, north-west London, has become the latest in a series of antisemitic attacks. So is rising antisemitism now a national emergency? And is more security for the Jewish community really the answer? Helen Pidd is joined by columnist Rafael Behr

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The German artist lived through Nazism and communism – and his horrific, shaming works, including a masturbating Hitler, forced his country to face its past. Yet in later life, he beautifully captured human frailty, portraying himself and his wife nude

Georg Baselitz was a living thread of history and his death robs us of the truth he knew when we need it more than ever. He was one of the only two people I have spoken to for whom Nazi Germany was a living memory: Baselitz was born in 1938, making him far too young to bear any personal guilt but old enough – seven when the Third Reich fell – to retain direct experience and images of it.

In his art, he cut those images up, gored and eviscerated them in paintings of uniformed young enthusiasts with blood spurting from mangled limbs or entire bodies fed through some hellish grinder and roughly remade. Into the woods they went, these ironically titled “Heroes”, chopping and being chopped in the guilty depths of the German forest.

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Share prices of United Utilities and Severn Trent show investors seem keen to throw capital at the right firms

Thames Water , with occasional cameos by ugly little siblings Southern Water and South East Water , grabs most of the attention in the sector for obvious reasons. So it’s easy to overlook what’s happening further north. Short answer: the new era of higher bills and higher spending on water infrastructure will feel splendid if you’re United Utilities, licence-holder in north-west England, or Severn Trent, operating in the Midlands.

The former’s share price surged 11% on Thursday, the sort of thing that shouldn’t happen at a utility where success is meant to be defined in terms of dull predictability. And it’s definitely unusual to see a one-day valuation jump of that size when the company is issuing £800m-worth of new shares. Indeed, there was a mini-stampede for UU’s equity after Australia’s sovereign wealth fund, Future Fund, and the global infrastructure investor Atlas grabbed half the allocation in the placing as “cornerstone” investors.

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