Five Just Stop Oil supporters who have served prison sentences of up to 15 months for planning an action at Heathrow airport that never took place have had their convictions upheld by the Court of Appeal.

Rosa Hicks, Adam Beard, Sean O’Callaghan, Sally Davidson and Hannah Schafer were among eight Just Stop Oil supporters convicted of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance after standing trial before Judge Duncan at Isleworth Crown Court in March 2025.

A ninth supporter was acquitted and another pleaded guilty before trial. Of the nine convicted, five were given jail terms of up to 15 months, while the remaining four were given suspended sentences.

They were the first people to be jailed in this country for an agreement to take part in nonviolent direct action, where no actual damage or disruption resulted.

Heathrow Five raise questions over jury integrity

In separate appeals heard on 12 May, the five argued that their convictions were unsafe. This followed a report from one juror to the Registrar of the Court of Appeal that another juror had made internet searches about the defendants and the Just Stop Oil campaign and shared highly prejudicial and partially false information within the jury room.

The Appeal heard evidence about the inadequacy of the police investigation that followed the report of misconduct. In particular, the police returned to the suspect juror two electronic devices which were clearly relevant to the case, which compromised them as evidential sources, and made no meaningful efforts to access the suspect juror’s two iPhones. No credible explanation was advanced by the police for these investigative failings.

At a preparatory hearing ahead of the appeal and prior to the suspect juror’s search history data being obtained, the government’s barrister Paul Jarvis claimed that the juror who had reported the jury misconduct was lying despite there being an ongoing police investigation into the matter.

In a ruling on 5 June, three senior judges – Andrew Edis, Maura McGowan and Martin Griffiths dismissed all the grounds for appeal and upheld the conviction.

The appellants released the following statement:

We are sad that the Court of Appeal has chosen to uphold our convictions despite overwhelming evidence that something went very wrong in the jury room, but we are of course not surprised.

The outcome of our appeal today marks a growing trend of using the justice system to crackdown on people trying to hold the powerful to account, be that the fossil fuel industry or the companies selling arms to Israel.

The appeal judgement changes nothing. Last month was the hottest, driest May in the UK since records began and our government and institutions are still failing in their most basic duty to protect us.

Whilst a successful appeal would have come with some personal benefit, our appeal has revealed something much more consequential for the rule of law.

Our conviction was engineered by a Judge who directed the jury to ignore evidence related to the climate crisis, which the judge referred to as a matter of opinion.

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This was despite undisputed evidence admitted in court, that global heating will have catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity.

It’s not surprising if trust breaks down when judges actively mislead a jury. That is where the responsibility for juror misconduct lies.

In cases like ours, when it must be obvious to jurors that so much is being kept from them inside the courtroom it makes sense that they might go looking for clues outside.

Throughout the appeal process, there has been a series of delays and misdirections on behalf of the crown. Not only did the police lose key evidence but they made attempts to close the investigation into juror misconduct prior to vital evidence being obtained.

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Perhaps most shocking of all, despite an ongoing police investigation into the matter, the lawyer for the CPS repeatedly claimed that the juror who reported the juror misconduct was lying. The police and Crown Prosecution Service maintaining their prosecutions at all costs is not justice.

We did not seek to blame any of the jurors who tried us. We want to thank the juror who came forward to blow the whistle on what happened in the jury room during our trial. They have shown courage and integrity, they didn’t have to speak up, but they did.

The Heathrow 10 were arrested on 24 July 2024, on the first day of the Oil Kills International Uprising to end fossil fuels.

During their trial the judge removed all legal defences from the jury’s consideration, ruled the climate emergency to be ‘irrelevant’ and forbade defendants from mentioning that a jury has a right to acquit a defendant as a matter of conscience.

The defendants were not permitted to bring expert witnesses on international law or climate science or to show the jury videos they recorded of themselves speaking before the action, nor were they allowed to read the quotes from news articles about their arrests and subsequent remand to prison.

Featured image via Just Stop Oil

By The Canary

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The post ‘The elites have never stopped sneering since’ appeared first on spiked.

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Labour MP Jess Asato has announced that she has initiated a legal test case against Elon Musk’s xAI. The case will take to task Grok AI’s creation of fake, pornographic and derogatory content seen in January.

Attracting particular condemnation is the fact that the AI tool produced a demeaning, offensive and frankly, dangerous video which showed the MP:

being chloroformed and prepared for sexual assault.

Grok AI and its prolific creation of sexualised content, including of young children, has prompted widespread anger as it became clear the business model was happy to make money out of the most abusive and sinister views held by paedophiles, perverts, and rapists.

It then comes as little surprise that others affected by Grok have now joined the legal test case against Musk following Jess Asato’s decision to confront the billionaire head-on.

The legal case specifically argues that xAI violated data protection law and breached Asato’s private information when it permitted the images to be created.

New claimants seek to sue Elon Musk’s xAI after Labour MP’s test case
Jess Asato’s lawyer says others want to take action over demeaning sexualised material created by Grok AI toolhttps://t.co/XYOs5Lutlw

— dave lawrence (@dave43law) June 5, 2026

Musk faces another legal challenge

Back in January, Musk’s AI tool Grok generated approximately 3 million sexualised pictures in less than two weeks, which researchers said:

became an industrial-scale machine for the production of sexual abuse material.

One concerning aspect to this is the fact that the AI tool had no issues with requests such as “remove her clothes” or “put her in a bikini”. In reality, the tool will generate almost anything a user asks for – including these sexualised images of women without consent. Subsequently, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) launched an inquiry into Grok AI and the images it has produced.

Justifiably, many women feel their privacy is being undermined. After all, even when victims know the images are fake, they can still look real enough to humiliate, demean, and leave people feeling exposed. Let’s face it, if it didn’t, these kinds of men wouldn’t be so interested.

Moreover, its creation of child sexual abuse content drives home the fact that this tool has played into incredibly sinister, pervasive, and perverted mentalities amongst abusive men. When women and girls already face rising levels of abuse and violence, this increased threat financed by a soon-to-be trillionaire is a worrying sign for the direction of travel in the West.

Therefore, it is restoring to see victims of this abuse stepping forward to hold the tech giant to account for the abuse he has fostered and facilitated.

The legal director of the law firm AWO, Ravi Naik, confirmed to the Guardian he is acting for “multiple individuals”, and stated on the firm’s website:

At its heart, this case is about a single principle – that AI developers must answer for the way they design their tools. Where there is a wrong, the law must provide a remedy – and that is as true of artificial intelligence as of anything else.

No one should be subjected to abuse like this, and no one should have to instruct a lawyer to get images like these taken down.

This content existed because of design choices made by xAI, and technology of this kind does not simply happen. It is built, and it is built deliberately. Grok was designed in a way that permitted the creation of non-consensual, sexualised and misogynistic images of women – and that outcome was a choice, not a glitch.

This is one of the first claims to test liability for the design of an AI system, and we hope it will make it clear to AI developers that safety cannot be an afterthought.

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Asato: ‘Literally strips your clothes off and makes you vulnerable’

Asato has spoken to the “psychologically distressing” impact it has as a woman to have fake nude images made without consent, and insists that her legal challenge is necessary to ensure that AI companies have a responsibility in what it’s products enable, stating:

Grok created deepfake pornography and sexualised content which harmed thousands of women and children.

Its ability is not an accident, nor misuse, it is a design choice by its creators. In launching this case, I am pursuing accountability for those choices.

I hope this legal action also gives voice to the thousands of victims in the UK, women, girls and horrifically even children, who were abused by Grok. I am calling on anyone in the UK who experienced the misuse of their image or video by Grok to come forward and support our legal claim.

This escalating abuse targeting Asato came after she called for the introduction of an anti-nudification act to combat these sexualised attacks.

Let’s be honest, serious – and thus proven – concerns exist that men will misuse this AI tool if allowed to. Even if Musk insists that is not its intended purpose, creeps can still exploit it to create and spread harmful material under the radar. Especially when its creators do nothing to stop it and instead, draw profits from such sordid interests.

Going further, a particular worry is that when tech platforms don’t properly guard against this kind of pervasive use, it starts to normalise it. And once that happens, it becomes easier for sexualised harassment and abuse to spread, escalate, and feel even more acceptable online. Needless to say, as we see generally in society, what becomes normalised online soon becomes normalised in daily life.

As a result, women, girls and children are left increasingly exposed to harm – and one of the world’s most powerful men is enabling it.

The government must be made to take REAL action

Whether Musk will take heed of this legal challenge awaits to be seen – he didn’t seem concerned back in January when this happened. In fact, he shared hateful abuse fired at Asato after she objected to the harm caused by the ‘bikinification’ trend. Signalling his escalatory influence, that is when the deepfake video showing her being chloroformed was produced and thus replied to Musk’s retweet.

It remains to be seen whether the government will show any real backbone in holding tech giants like Musk to account. Even while criticising his “extreme personal views”, Peter Kyle still found time to describe him as a “successful innovator and commercialiser of innovation”. Last year, he even stated the government must “respect and engage with” Musk who he called an “unignorable force”.

That kind of mixed messaging – condemning on one hand while praising on the other – does little to suggest ministers are prepared to take on real power.

Once again, a powerful and controversial figure gets wrapped up in talk of being “complex”, rather than being judged on the real-world impact of his actions. If the government keeps talking out of both sides of its mouth, it’s hard to see how it will ever seriously rein in Big Tech.

Featured image via Getty/Joe Raedle

By Maddison Wheeldon

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The post Henry Nowak: why we should rage against two-tier policing appeared first on spiked.

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Green Party Leader Zack Polanski is under fire for calling for potential British-Israeli dual national war criminals to be investigated. The Jewish News platformed commentators who conflated criticism of the state of Israel with antisemitism over Polanski’s signing of a Declassified UK letter calling for basic accountability.

Polanski, who is Jewish, signed the 26 May letter. Declassified and the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians are running a campaign to force police to investigate Brits who served in the Israeli military during the genocide. You can read the Canary’s report here.

The campaign letter reads:

We, the undersigned, are politicians, lawyers, campaigners, human rights defenders, journalists, and concerned members of the public who believe the public interest is best served by monitoring the entry of British-Israeli dual national citizens into the UK and investigating potential links to war crimes, in cases where they have served in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

Over 2000 Brits have served in the genocide, yet UK police have refused to investigate. The letter makes two recommendations:

Firstly:

Implement a disclosure requirement regarding service in the Israeli military, subjecting travellers with Israeli travel documents or arriving from an origin of Tel Aviv airport to potential secondary screening at ports of entry under domestic war crimes inadmissibility rules and/or adjusted visa policies.

And secondly:

Conduct robust, impartial and independent investigations and prosecutions at national or international levels, in compliance with the obligation to ensure accountability for the most serious crimes under international law, to ensure justice for all victims and the prevention of future crimes.

Conflating accountability with antisemitism

Jewish Leadership Council Public Affairs Director Russell Langer told Jewish News:

At a time of rising antisemitism, it is particularly disturbing to see calls for the monitoring of dual British-Israeli citizens. Demonisation of Israelis is not a criticism of a foreign government but the targeting of a group of people for their nationality.

Adding:

Such hatred risks making British Jews, many of whom have close family and social connections to Israel, a target for hostility and violence.

A spokesperson for the Board of Deputies said:

This petition seems to be another attempt to demonise Israelis and promote an atmosphere of intimidation against British Jews.

It is an example of what the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation Jonathan Hall KC has described as the ignoring of conventions against the promotion of collective hatred against a nationality in the case of Israelis.

The spokesperson added:

The call of those who have signed it, including Zack Polanski, to treat people as potential criminals just because of their passport is a unique and wholly unacceptable form of discrimination.

The conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism – and with a general critique of the settler-colonial state of Israel – has always been a scurrilous thing. Almost three years of genocide has diminished the power of this attack line. Previously indifferent publics now understand the colonialist nature of the Israeli project and the roles of the US and UK.

Polanski has his shortcomings – the Canary isn’t shy about pointing them out – but on this the Green leader is absolutely correct.

Featured image via Getty/Ryan Jenkinson

By Joe Glenton

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Fans attending the 2026 World Cup will not be allowed to bring reusable water bottles into stadiums. The latest restriction introduced by FIFA has sparked criticism and concerns about temperatures across the tournament’s hottest host cities. This year’s tournament features 48 teams for the first time. It will take place across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. As a result, several matches are expected to be played in high temperatures and humidity.

What has changed in stadium rules?

Under the new regulations, fans cannot bring reusable water bottles into venues. However, previously, spectators could carry transparent, empty plastic bottles up to one litre. The updated policy also bans cups, metal containers, and similar items.

FIFA says the move is part of a broader security framework. In a statement, the governing body explained that such objects could be used as projectiles, posing a danger to fans, players, and tournament staff. In a statement to Reuters, FIFA said it is committed to protecting:

the health and safety of all players, referees, fans, volunteers and staff.

FIFA also cited safety reasons, saying the ban is intended to reduce the risk of injury:

Outside bottles are already prohibited at several of these venues for safety considerations and FIFA is applying this ​consideration across its tournament stadiums.

Heat concerns at host cities

FIFA fans hit back

Fan groups have slammed FIFA’s policy, including England’s “Free Lions,” who called the water bottle ban a blatant money grab so close to kickoff.

The group said they had previously been assured reusable water bottles would be allowed, and questioned the sudden reversal.

What next? Suncream banned and fans forced to buy it in stadiums?

For all of the effort they are going to with ‘drinks breaks’ for the players, this is such a strange, late change.

In all of our discussions, free water availability in stadiums was a key one and we were assured… https://t.co/cXjwQwhRLO pic.twitter.com/0XhGsHHECS

— Free Lions (@WeAreFreeLions) June 4, 2026

Speaking to the Guardian, Ronan Evain, director of Football Supporters Europe, called FIFA’s water ban “a real health risk,” warning that harder access to hydration raises the chances of heatstroke and dehydration. He also slammed the governing body for putting profits ahead of fan safety, calling the decision “appalling” and saying it:

shows the priority seems to be, again, to generate revenues. How immoral it is to [profit from] water in this situation when people’s health is at risk.

Featured image via Dan Mullan / Getty Images

By Alaa Shamali

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Brighton-based Tony Greenstein is one of the best-known of the UK’s many Jewish anti-genocide activists. As a result, he is one of the most targeted by the Israel lobby’s attacks and smears – including by the UK government. And he has again been hit with one of the most insidious forms of financial attack: de-banking.

‘De-banking’ is a financial state and establishment terror weapon. It involves the summary closure of bank accounts, often under orders or pressure from government or influential groups. This is frequently used as a weapon to financially disable those who stand up for the Palestinian people against genocide, occupation and oppression.

Greenstein was first targeted in July 2025, when HSBC and one of its subsidiaries simultaneously decided to ‘review’ his account arrangements and unilaterally closed his accounts.

“Financial terrorism”

Now, both Greenstein personally and charities he helps run have been targeted simultaneously, by banking giant Santander. He told Skwawkbox:

Santander has just frozen my accounts and also that of the Brighton Trust and [of] Brighton Unemployed Workers Centre.

It is little short of outrageous and they haven’t even informed me what they are doing. It is financial terrorism

The bank provided no communication about its actions. Instead, Greenstein only found out the accounts had been frozen when he tried to access them. He does not know whether or how he or the charities will be able to access their funds.

Featured image via Getty/Leon Neal

By Skwawkbox

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Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. In Belfast, Home Office incompetence is threatening Nina Briggs, head of the Migrant Workers’ Union Northern Ireland, with deportation.

They insist that Briggs’ active appeal against the unfair Home Office decision does not exist. That is despite an immigration tribunal confirming the department submitted documents in her case in December 2025.

Briggs has spent the last 14 years living in Britain or the North of Ireland. Born in the US, she came to Britain to study at St Andrews University in Scotland back in 2012, at age 16. She subsequently entered into a relationship in which, she told the Canary, her partner subjected her to terrible domestic abuse. This resulted in physical injuries and severe post-traumatic stress disorder, which a GP and therapist said caused “permanent disability”.

Home Office ignores conclusive evidence of domestic abuse

The abuse resulted in Briggs returning to the US to seek treatment between 2018-2019. By the time she had fully recovered, COVID had hit. Travel restrictions during this period meant she was unable to head back to Britain or the north of Ireland. She eventually came to Belfast in 2021, under another student visa, this time for a PhD in intergroup contact and mending conflict at Queen’s University Belfast.

Ordinarily, anyone who stays legally in Britain and North of Ireland for 10 years continuously can be automatically granted Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR). This gives the holder most of the rights of a British citizen, but without full citizenship. Briggs’ reasonable claim is that the period of her medical care in the US, along with the COVID timeframe, should count towards that 10 year period, on compassionate grounds.

Here’s where the malice part of the Home Office enters the picture. The department, tasked by successive sadists acting as home secretary, tries to find any way it can not to grant people the right to stay. In this case, they deemed Briggs’ evidence “not compelling”. She told the Canary:

This is despite having evidence about the domestic violence from a GP, therapist, witness statements, and testimony from a domestic violence shelter.

Briggs appealed, and the Home Office now claims, implausibly, that her case does not exist. She has now been left in what she refers to as “3C limbo”. This is in reference to Section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971. Its terms should extend the rights of her last visa while her appeal is underway. However, because the Home Office say that appeal doesn’t exist, they have not granted her those rights. She said:

It means I can’t get housing. I can’t get health care, or legal aid. Nor can I self-employ or fundraise. I’m also facing a no-fault eviction, and Right to Rent checks prevent me from securing new accommodation.

Racist department prevent woman from attending family funerals

It’s a reminder of the cruelty inherent to Britain’s immigration system. That has been compounded by the rules preventing Briggs from leaving the country while stuck in this situation. If she did, the Home Office would rule that she had abandoned her case. This would effectively be an admission of guilt for the ‘crime’ of overstaying a visa. Such a finding would permanently affect her ability to travel.

During this period — which extends back to October 2024 — she has been unable to attend funerals for her grandmother, a cousin, an uncle, and several friends. Both her mother and stepmother have cancer.

Briggs has further grounds to request the right to stay. Despite being an accomplished data scientist who would be an asset to society here, the Home Office rejected her application for a skilled worker visa. She is bolstering her separate ILR application with evidence of her human rights work. This includes extensive efforts to combat human trafficking and modern slavery, areas the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) tends to fall short on.

‘High number of poor quality refusals’

As part of the efforts against modern slavery, Briggs has helped on investigations into children being dragged into criminality via racist pogroms led by loyalist paramilitaries. She told the Canary:

Unionist community leaders and politicians I’ve spoken to have been sympathetic to that work. It’s their community – they don’t want a whole generation of boys with their lives ruined due to getting a criminal record so early.

News of Home Office ineptitude won’t surprise anyone who follows the department closely. Free Movement have highlighted the “high number of poor quality refusals” as one of the “stand out problems of the asylum system”. The National Audit Office slated the Home Office for not having:

…a full understanding of how the Skilled Worker visa route is operating.

The department fails to trains its staff properly, and doesn’t have enough of them, resulting in huge backlogs on applications.

As a result of all this, combined with a dose of malice injected by the right, we risk losing the expertise and compassion of people like Nina Briggs.

Featured image via author

By Robert Freeman

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Most football matches are decided by small margins, but others are not. In fact, matches in the World Cup often feature remarkable scorelines not seen elsewhere. In such games, defensive structure can collapse, and goals accumulate quickly. Sometimes this happens through clear mismatches. At other times, it results from unusually open play. With the 2026 edition approaching in the United States, Canada and Mexico, a record 48 teams are taking part. This raises the bar. Uneven scorelines are all the more likely to appear, particularly when debut nations come up against established football powers.

Below are the highest-scoring matches in World Cup history, based on official FIFA records.

Nine-goal matches

Argentina 6–3 Mexico (1930) — This inaugural match showcased the drama that only the World Cup can deliver. Argentina defeated Mexico in a nine-goal contest.

Hungary 9–0 South Korea (1954) — Hungary produced one of the most one-sided wins in tournament history. They scored nine without reply.

West Germany 7–2 Türkiye (1954) — West Germany advanced comfortably with a seven-goal performance, during the play-off round.

France 6–3 West Germany (1958) — France finished third after a high-scoring match against West Germany.

Yugoslavia 9–0 Zaire (1974) — Yugoslavia recorded a nine-goal victory in the group stage. This stands as the most decisive result in any World Cup to date.

Ten-goal match

France 7–3 Paraguay (1958) — A ten-goal match played out during a tournament defined by Just Fontaine’s scoring record. Consequently, this World Cup fixture remains legendary.

Eleven-goal matches

Brazil 6–5 Poland (1938) — An open match ended narrowly in Brazil’s favour after a high-scoring contest typical of classic World Cup encounters.

Hungary 8–3 West Germany (1954) — Hungary’s attack overwhelmed West Germany in a group-stage meeting.

Hungary 10–1 El Salvador (1982) — Hungary recorded the largest winning margin in World Cup history. 

Twelve-goal record

Austria 7–5 Switzerland (1954) — The highest-scoring match in World Cup history remains the 1954 quarter-final known as the “Battle of Lausanne,” which produced 12 goals. World cup historians often cite this match for its non-stop action and drama. Austria came from behind in a match defined by constant swings in momentum.

Despite the expanded 2026 format, no match has yet rivalled Lausanne’s 12-goal record — 2026 will tell.

Featured image via Richard Heathcote / Getty Images

By Alaa Shamali

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3 min read43 min

Andy Burnham has said he would take a “much more devolved” approach to getting people into work and bringing down welfare spending.

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Speaking to PoliticsHome in Makerfield on Friday, where he is standing as Labour’s by-election candidate later this month, the Greater Manchester mayor said: “We’ve all got to be concerned with getting the welfare bill down.

“I don’t think there’s any debate about that, to be honest, it’s how you do it.”

He argued that the best way to do so was through a more localised approach, rather than cuts made in Westminster.

“It’s an overhaul that the Whitehall system can’t really make,” he said. “It’s an argument actually for dealing with this in a much more devolved way than it is currently done.”

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Burnham – who confirmed in a BBC debate on Thursday that he wants to replace Prime Minister Keir Starmer in No 10 if his bid to return to the House of Commons is successful – told PoliticsHome that local and regional authorities should be empowered to give out-of-work people the support they need for mental health problems.

“We don’t have a system that is set up to look and really get to the heart of why somebody isn’t able to sustain themselves in the labour market, and that’s been the journey that I’ve been on as mayor of Greater Manchester.

“But if you do give people what they’re looking for, I think you can support more people into work,” he said.

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Welfare has emerged as a thorny issue for the Labour government since being elected in July 2024.

Starmer tried to introduce benefits reforms last year but was forced to abandon the plans by a major Labour backbench rebellion.

Private messages published by the government earlier this week showed Work and Pensions Secretary complaining to former US ambassador Peter Mandelson that “every meeting” he had with Labour MPs was a discussion about “who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others”.

A new report authored by former health secretary Alan Milburn found that the total annual cost to the taxpayer of just under one million young people not being in employment, education or training (NEET) is £125bn per year.

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Speaking to PoliticsHome, Burnham described the report as a “very significant intervention”.

“I’ve contributed to it, and I think Alan is interested in what we’ve done because we’ve taken a different approach to supporting people into work.

“And this is the thing: The DWP (Department for Work and Pensions) system, I don’t think does do that, because it’s a very narrow approach in this day and age.”

He continued: “The reasons why people, particularly young people, may not be in work would be related to mental health or the housing situation or the debt they may be facing, a whole range of other things that are going on.”

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Burnham criticised previous governments for encouraging more than 50 per cent of people to go to university.

“The obsession with the university route began with the Blair government, but then was very much continued by Gove in his reforms, [and] left 50 per cent or more of young people, particularly in an area like this [thinking], well, what about me?

In an interview with The House magazine in Makerfield, Burnham said he is “not going to hold back” on early reform to the House of Lords if he becomes prime minister.

“I can’t justify, personally, 800-plus members of the House of Lords. I don’t think – with great respect to many people in it, because I have true great respect, because there’s some incredible people in there – what the country spends on the House of Lords is actually justified by what the output is,” he said.

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