Climate campaign group Fossil Free London has held a Valentine’s Day themed protest in St. Dunstan’s in the East churchyard. The stunt comes ahead of the UK government’s decision on whether to approve or reject the Rosebank oil field.

Campaigners stood in couples – wearing suits and pastel frilly dresses – holding up oversized love heart sweet placards that read: ‘Save Me’, ‘Hot Earth’ and ‘Stop Rosebank’.

Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government originally approved the oil field in 2023. But the Scottish courts overturned this decision in January 2025. The ruling demanded that Rosebank’s primary owner, Norwegian state oil giant Equinor, provide a more detailed assessment of the project’s full climate impacts.

Burning Rosebank’s total estimated oil and gas reserves would emit more carbon dioxide than the world’s 28 lowest-income countries combined release annually.

Rosebank: UK pays, Norway profits

Equinor would sell the vast majority of Rosebank’s oil on the international market for export. It would neither lower energy bills nor increase energy security in the UK. Meanwhile, UK public money would pick up the bill for most of its development costs.

Ahead of Equinor’s profits announcement at the start of February, Fossil Free London staged a protest over its role in Rosebank.

Most of Rosebank’s profits would flow into Norway’s substantial sovereign wealth fund. This potential megapolluter could also send profits of over £200m to the Delek Group. Delek is an Israeli fuel conglomerate that the UN has flagged for human rights violations in Palestine.

Robin Wells, Director of Fossil Free London, said:

This Valentine’s Day the U.K. government will be deciding whether Rosebank is hot…or not. But we know that Rosebank will be too hot to handle…Labour, save us from all new oil projects, because Rosebank will kill millions!

Featured image via Fossil Free London

Writer Joseph Tucker is working on a drama about Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party. The script will draw on Alex Nunns’ book The Candidate and Paul Holden’s recent release, The Fraud. To round out his research, he’s appealing for additional eye witnesses.

Sabotage of Corbyn

Under the working title A Very British Sabotage, the drama promises to lay bare:

the subversion of UK democracy by vandal elements within the Labour Party. They prioritised sabotage over winning an election and governing the UK at a critical point.

Both Nunns and Holden wrote about how Corbyn and his team faced huge opposition from within their own party. Holden, writing more recently, was able to show how Keir Starmer succeeded Corbyn with the grubby help of Morgan McSweeney.

Clearly the stage is set for all manner of duplicity, intrigue and back-stabbing.

Tucker has already undertaken a great deal of research but he’d still like to obtain more contextual information. To this end he’s put out an appeal for eye-witness accounts from anyone who was in the thick of it.

Tucker’s request

I am producing a drama exploring Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as leader of the Labour Party, based on two books, The Candidate (Alex Nunns) and The Fraud (Paul Holden).

As part of my research I wish to speak confidentially with people who worked in Labour Party HQ (Southside) 2015-19. Accounts will inform dramatic reconstruction and institutional context. Identities will be handled with care. Anonymity and attribution will always be discussed and agreed in advance. All information shared will be subject to verification and corroboration.

Are you former:

• Political communications staff?
• Policy or governance staff?
• Junior employees with lived experience of internal culture?

A formal legal framework is in place to protect sources and the materials shared during this process. Material provided will not be published as standalone news reporting.

If this sounds like you, please email: [email protected]

Coming soon

Production on A Very British Sabotage should be beginning soon. So if you’ve got a story to share, please get in touch pronto. Otherwise, keep an eye out for further updates as the project moves towards release.

Featured image via the Canary

How to cope when it won’t stop raining

Replace lost movement with “Micro-Activation”

Increase brightness and contrast indoors

Protect small, consistent social contact

Support mood biologically

The US armada president Donald Trump spent months assembling in the Caribbean will return to the Middle East. The news comes after reports that Venezuela had shipped oil to Israel for the first time in nearly two decades.

The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford arrived in the Caribbean in November 2025. The Ford and her fleet were one facet of a massive military build-up. The US also rebuilt regional bases and carried out drone strikes on alleged ‘narco-terrorist’ boats.

It was all about drugs, the US administration had claimed. That argument has fallen apart since the US kidnapped the country’s president Nicolas Maduro on 3 January. Nearly every reference to the drug cartel Maduro supposedly ran was from dropped from the US indictment.

The New York Times said on 13 February:

The Ford strike group’s new orders will have it joining the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group in the Persian Gulf as part of President Trump’s resurgent pressure campaign against Iran’s leaders.

They added:

Mr. Trump had indicated earlier this week that he wanted to send a second carrier to the region, but neither he nor the Navy had identified the vessel.

It appears the US has achieved its immediate military aims in Venezuela.

Oil to Israel

Maduro’s successor Delcy Rodriguez – who seems more at ease with US empire – has been in charge since Maduro was snatched. Though Venezuelan officials said the reports of oil shipments to Israel were “fake”.

But Bloomberg reported on 10 Feb:

The oil is being transported to Bazan Group, the Mediterranean country’s top crude processor, people with knowledge of the deal said, asking not to be identified because the information isn’t public.

But details are still hazy and those involved are staying tight lipped:

Bazan, also known as Oil Refineries Ltd, declined to comment. Israel’s energy ministry declined to comment on where the country gets its crude from.

The US carrier group’s Caribbean mission seems to be done – for now. With a more amenable leader in place in Venezuela, the warships are being sent back to the the Gulf region to deal with Iran. The Ford will join the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier fleet in the area.

As the Canary argued on 29 January, a strike on Iran is far more complicated than the attack on Venezuela. The fact remains, however, that while the US is an empire in decline it still has a long reach. And it still has a president willing to threatened, cajole, and kill to meet his ever-changing imperial whims.

Featured image via the Canary

The scene needed no explanation.

A white shroud, rectangular and silent, lay in the middle of a small square crowded with weary faces. Around it, men lined up to pray, their eyes fixed on something that could not be fully seen, but only imagined. Inside, what were believed to be the remains of a mother and her four children. Four siblings who came into life after years of deprivation, then left it all at once.

The image encapsulates two years of heavy waiting in Gaza. Two years in which the story remained suspended between loss and hope, between unanswered questions and a small hope that the absent ones would return to be buried as befits human beings. Only today was the final scene completed: a funeral prayer that was two years late.

Gaza: four siblings buried together

In the front row stands the father, Fadi Al-Baba. Those who know him do not need to ask him how he feels. His eyes say it all. In front of him is the white shroud, inside which lie his wife and four children who came to him after a long wait. Four siblings, who were a promise of a life that would make up for years of patience, turned into a memory buried by Israel’s genocide under its rubble, before the earth returned them in a small white bag.

The loss was not a fleeting moment. It was an extended period of time. From the day of their martyrdom until the day of their burial, the father lived on the edge of absence; no proper farewell, no grave to visit. Today, as he raises his hands in funeral prayer, it seems as if that first moment is returning with all its weight. As if two years have shrunk into a single tear.

The white shroud in the photo is not just a piece of cloth. It is the final resting place for five souls. It’s a witness to a family story whose first chapter was never completed. It is a summary of questions bigger than a photo: How can such a long wait end in silence? How can a father say goodbye to his children together, after dreaming of them together?

The stories never end

The stories of Gaza never end, because they are never told in full. Every photograph opens the door to a postponed story, and every delayed funeral reveals a period of pain that remains unwitnessed. In this photograph, we see only a white shroud and a grieving father, but behind them lies a history of longing, deprivation and waiting.

The scene ends with a final burial, but it does not end the story.

Some losses are not buried, but remain alive in the memory of a father who, whenever he sees four children together, will remember that he had four… who returned to him in a single shroud.

Featured image via the Canary

Donald Trump has launched an attack on the very foundation of US climate regulation. And it could represent his biggest assault yet, leading to both higher greenhouse gas emissions and an increase in health risks for ordinary people. In the UK, meanwhile, Reform continues to mimic Trump’s anti-climate agenda.

Trump’s massive climate rollback could lead to “58,000 additional premature deaths”

Both Trump’s regime and its critics have noted the scale of this move, calling it either the “largest deregulation” ever in US history or:

the most significant rollback on climate change yet

As the BBC reports, Trump has revoked a key:

scientific ruling that underpins all federal actions on curbing planet-warming gases.

The “endangerment finding” of 2009 ruled that numerous greenhouse gases are “a threat to public health”. And this conclusion turned into:

the legal bedrock of federal efforts to rein in emissions, especially in vehicles.

According to the Environmental Defense Fund’s Peter Zalzal, Trump’s move could cost ordinary people more in:

additional fuel costs to power these less efficient and higher polluting vehicles

It could also:

result in up to 58,000 additional premature deaths, 37 million more asthma attacks

The winners, of course, would be billionaire polluters. And they’re celebrating twice as hard, because Trump is also increasing funding for coal facilities and pushing the US military into deals with power plants using coal. Coal stocks are predictably doing well as a result.

“Trump’s EPA repeals science” sums it up. pic.twitter.com/elI4YYIQVc

— Jeff (@jepaco) February 13, 2026

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Today, the US @EPA rescinded its 2009 endangerment finding: a drastic move even in the context of the Trump administration’s larger deregulatory and anti-climate agenda.

This move poses a particular threat to reproductive rights. Read more: https://t.co/CckiPuttHC

— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) February 12, 2026

Reform is a Trump tribute act

Reform UK, meanwhile, is busy mimicking Trump. And it would do that, because it’s firmly in the pockets of the billionaire polluters mentioned above. Currently, Reform’s anti-climate agenda is focusing on scamming people into thinking reducing greenhouse gas emissions is bad.

The party hasn’t just been pushing climate-change denialism and dangerous industries like fracking. It’s also been repeating over and over again its attacks on the global effort to limit carbon emissions (‘Net Zero‘):

Ed Miliband and Vladimir Putin are the same, in terms of your electricity bill

Superb by @KathrynPorter26

Net Stupid Zero is driving bills UP

Not down

We have been conned and misled

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https://t.co/IENYf5oDrS

— Richard Tice MP 🇬🇧 (@TiceRichard) February 13, 2026

Even Blair agrees with Reform on Net Stupid Zero & calls on Labour to keep drilling for oil in North Seahttps://t.co/suaYXxcSjt

— Richard Tice MP 🇬🇧 (@TiceRichard) February 13, 2026

Who knew?

👇👇 https://t.co/LeX7uDMiwv

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— Lee Anderson MP (@LeeAndersonMP_) February 12, 2026

A Net Zero Reminder. https://t.co/3pl5xoNFKo

— Lee Anderson MP (@LeeAndersonMP_) February 13, 2026

The problem for Reform, though, is that 60% of Brits support Net Zero, and only 25% oppose it. So it’s a much harder sell than in the US. But with super-rich backers filling Reform’s pockets, it will keep pushing. And if it gets into government, we can be sure that it will behave exactly as Trump’s behaving.

Featured image via the Canary

The UK High Court has decided that the interpretation of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) interim guidance on a bathroom ban for trans people is incorrect.

However, as has always been the case with this deeply transphobic piece of legislation, it is extremely difficult to parse because it is, at its core, nonsensical.

The Good Law Project challenged the EHRC’s interim guidance in the High Court. The EHRC interpreted the Supreme Court’s ruling on Gender Recognition Certificates (GRCs) as the basis for a blanket ban on trans people using single-sex facilities.

Instead, the Good Law Project explained:

The High Court has now said that this interpretation of the law is wrong. Service providers may lawfully allow trans women to use women’s facilities without being forced to open them to cis men. And such facilities may simply be labelled for ‘men’ and ‘women’.

Put simply:

The court has also made clear that it will likely be discriminatory to force trans people to use facilities based on their sex recorded at birth. In short, the law does not require a bathroom ban.

Trans bathroom ban faces more opposition

The new ruling states:

[1] In workplaces, it is compulsory to provide sufficient single-sex toilets, as well as sufficient single-sex changing and washing facilities where these facilities are needed.

[2] It is not compulsory for services that are open to the public to be provided on single-sex basis or to have single-sex facilities such as toilets. These can be single-sex if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim and they meet other conditions in the Act. However, it could be indirect sex discrimination against women if the only provision is mixed-sex.

Effectively, in workplaces, it is compulsory to provide single-sex spaces, but it is not compulsory in services that are open to the public.

‼️🏳️‍⚧️After a challenge by @GoodLawProject, the High Court made clear that the EHRC guidance is based on an incorrect interpretation of the law & does not require blanket trans bathroom bans. Service providers can lawfully include trans people in facilities that match their gender. pic.twitter.com/vqZkvPJAl3

— Thomas Willett (@ThomasWillett9) February 13, 2026

This means that if you are trans, but not out at work, you must still stop using the toilets of your lived gender at work.

However, the ruling then goes on to say:

[3] In workplaces and services that are open to the public:
[a]
• trans women (biological men) should not be permitted to use the women’s facilities and trans men (biological women) should not be permitted to use the men’s facilities, as this will mean they are no longer single-sex facilities and must be open to all users of the opposite sex
[b]
• In some circumstances the law also allows trans women (biological men) not to be permitted to use the men’s facilities, and trans men (biological woman) not to be permitted to use the women’s facilities

Then, after effectively telling trans people they may never use the bathroom ever again, it adds:

[c]
• however, where facilities are available to both men and women, trans people should not be put in a position where there are no facilities for them to use
[d]
• where possible, mixed-sex toilet, washing or changing facilities in addition to sufficient single-sex facilities should be provided
[e]

where toilet, washing or changing facilities are in lockable rooms (not cubicles) which are intended for the use of one person at a time, they can be used by either women or men

Shockingly, the ruling also states that trans people should be prepared to be the subject of gossip.

A propensity for gossip is a feature of every workplace. So far as concerns gossip at work, no employee can expect not to be the subject of gossip about something on some occasion. Gossip is usually temporary; it is in its nature to be short-lived, as one subject is quickly overtaken by another. Up to a point, being the subject of comment by others is burden that anyone can expect to bear from time to time, and ought not to be a foundation for legal redress.

So whilst the High Court did decide that services may lawfully allow trans women to use women’s facilities – the fight is far from over.

This also means the EHRC’s exclusionary draft Code of Practice does not accurately reflect the law. Therefore, the Minister, Bridget Phillipson, will have to send it back to be rewritten.

A transphobic and violent society

Judges swear an oath, which states:

Do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of this realm, without fear or favour, affection or ill will.

What is clear is that the judge in this case has no idea of the lived realities of being trans. They also do not seem interested in the rights of trans people who want to keep their biological sex private. The ruling also gives zero weight to the harm done to trans people by excluding them. Judges may swear an oath – but they’re clearly not holding up their end.

The Good Law Project put it perfectly in its critique of how the law if purposely failing trans people:

It doesn’t matter if you have lived as a woman or a man the entirety of your adult life and even your close friends don’t know. It doesn’t matter how you present, what stage you are at in your transition, or what medical treatments you have undertaken. It doesn’t matter that we live in a society that is increasingly transphobic and, increasingly, violently so. It doesn’t matter that, particularly in such a society, trans people might feel that their privacy is a matter of profound importance and no one’s business but their own. It doesn’t matter that there is no evidence that allowing you to use the toilets you have always used will cause harm. It doesn’t matter if forcibly outing you as trans will put you at risk of harm.

The Good Law Project will, of course, be appealing the High Court’s judgment. You can donate to its fundraiser here.

Featured image via Mike Newbry/Unsplash

Ex-Inter, Man City and Italy player Mario Balotelli says he was racially abused by fans in UAE. Balotelli currently plays for Saudi team Al-Ittifaq.

The player said:

This kind of behaviour cannot be normalised, excused, or ignored. I’m speaking out to bring awareness – not just for myself, but for every player who has been subjected to this. Enough is enough.

He added:

I’ve always condemned all acts of racism, but I didn’t expect it here. I hope serious measures are taken to prevent this from happening again.

The Independent said neither Al-Ittifaq nor their UAE opponents on the day have commented. Balotelli played for Inter and AC Milan, Man City, Liverpool and other clubs before joining the Saudi team.

Racism in football reflects society

Football writer Valerio Moggia said racism was common in the Saudi league. In a July 2025 blog, he wrote about racism experienced by Brazilian winger Malcolm:

Malcom was seen having a confrontation with some fans at the stadium, at the end of the match. Videos of this argument circulated online, causing critics for the Brazilian’s behaviour towards fans: the player’s Instagram account was stormed by angry people, and some of them have resorted to racist epithets, calling him “monkey”.

Moggia said:

Gulf countries are not usually linked to racial discrimination’s episodes, seen as a mostly Western issue. But a closer look to Saudi society reveal that ethnic and religious biases are very common, even between Saudi citizens.

His excellent study of racism in Saudi soccer can be read here.

🚨🗣️| MARIO BALOTELLI:

“Today, during a match, I was racially abuse multiple times.

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I was repeatedly told: “Uh uh uh, you go eat banana.”

There is absolutely no place for racism in football, or in the society. This kind of behaviour cannot be normalised, excused, or ignored.… pic.twitter.com/RxpYW3oIpo

— Goals Side (@goalsside) February 11, 2026

Career-long abuse

Balotelli endured racism throughout his career. Born in Palermo to Ghanian parents, the mercurial forward played on the biggest stages and won the Premier League with Manchester City.

Goal.com collated just some of the incidents he endured in a 2018 piece:

His mere presence in the Azzurrini [Italy} squad had already provoked fury among contributors to forums on right-wing sites such as Stormfront and White Front.

They added:

In April 2009, Balotelli was racially abused by Juventus fans throughout Inter’s 1-1 draw with the Bianconeri in Turin. “There are no black Italians,” they sang.

Abuse from Spain and Croatia fans continued at Euro 2012. In his recent time in France, at Nice, it was still happening.

At 35, Balotelli is nearing the end of his career. At virtually every stage he’s faced racism which he has vocally stood up against. Football markets itself as the global game. Going into World Cup 2026 — Donald Trump’s world cup — racism is still wrecking the game and the culture.

Featured image via the Canary