Exclusive: UK willing to placate Trump with lower digital services tax rate also encompassing non-US companies

Big US technology companies have been offered a significant tax cut by Keir Starmer in return for lower tariffs from Donald Trump’s administration as the UK braces itself for a global trade war.

The Guardian understands the UK government is willing to reduce the headline rate of its digital services tax (DST) in an attempt to placate the US president, while at the same time applying the levy to companies from other countries.

Senior doctor who saw bodies says men appeared to have been ‘executed’, adding to evidence of potential war crime

Some of the bodies of 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, killed by Israeli forces and buried in a mass grave nine days ago in Gaza, were found with their hands or legs tied and had gunshot wounds to the head and chest, according to two eyewitnesses.

The witness accounts add to an accumulating body of evidence pointing to a potentially serious war crime on 23 March, when Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance crews and civil defence rescue workers were sent to the scene of an airstrike in the early hours of the morning in the al-Hashashin district of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city.

Exclusive: State department said to have raised concerns over whether new online safety act infringes on freedom of expression

US state department officials have challenged Britain’s communications regulator over the impact on freedom of expression created by new online safety laws, the Guardian understands.

A group of officials from the state department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) recently met with Ofcom in London. It is understood that they raised the issue of the new online safety act and how it risked infringing free speech.

Lucy Osborne tells high court she was ‘taken aback’ at number of people in contact over the actor’s alleged sexual misconduct

A Guardian journalist who has worked on high-profile investigations into allegations of sexual misconduct by men said the volume of fresh leads received after writing about Noel Clarke was the most she had ever witnessed.

Lucy Osborne, who, with Sirin Kale, carried out the Guardian’s investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct against the Doctor Who actor, told the high court that she was “taken aback” by how many people got in touch after publication of the first article.

Officers responded to reports of person carrying firearm, Thames Valley police say as IOPC launches investigation

A man has been shot dead by police responding to reports of a person carrying a firearm at Milton Keynes railway station.

Thames Valley police (TVP) officers were called to the station by members of the public at 12.55pm on Tuesday. The man was shot by police in the station square outside the building and died at 1.44pm.

Society of Black Lawyers calls decision to block pre-sentencing reports ‘deliberate step backwards’

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Shabana Mahmood’s intervention to halt new guidelines on sentencing is “dangerous” and a “deliberate step backwards”, according to senior legal figures and prison campaigners.

The Society of Black Lawyers said guidelines from the Sentencing Council, which were suspended after an intervention by the justice secretary, were an attempt to achieve “equal treatment” after “racist two-tier policing for 500 years”.

At risk of first custodial sentence and/or at risk of a custodial sentence of 2 years or less (after taking into account any reduction for guilty plea).

A young adult (typically 18-25 years.

Female.

From an ethnic minority, cultural minority, and/or faith minority community.

Pregnant or postnatal.

Sole or primary carer for dependent relatives.”

Mangione, 26, accused of carrying out ‘premeditated assassination’ of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson

Federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against the man accused of fatally shooting the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, outside a Manhattan hotel on 4 December, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said on Tuesday.

Bondi said in a press release that she had “directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty” for Luigi Mangione, 26, because he allegedly committed “a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America”. The move, Bondi notes, was in an effort to “carry out President Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again”.

Moscow’s refusal highlights the limited progress Donald Trump has made on his promise to end the war

Moscow has described the latest US peace proposals as unacceptable to the Kremlin, highlighting the limited progress Donald Trump has made on his promise to end the war in Ukraine since taking office in January.

Sergei Ryabkov, a foreign policy adviser to Vladimir Putin, said some of Russia’s key demands were not being addressed by the US proposals to end the war, in comments that marked a rare acknowledgment from the Russian side that talks with the US over Ukraine had stalled in recent weeks.

Grant Paterson, 54, from South Lanarkshire, was pulled out from rubble on final day of visit

A Scottish tourist who suffered severe burns in a suspected gas explosion at a building in Rome has died of his injuries.

Grant Paterson, 54, was admitted to hospital on 23 March after the explosion and subsequent collapse of the block of flats where he was staying, in the Monteverde district.

Exclusive: Richard Harris, 71, died last July after series of errors at troubled Royal Sussex County hospital in Brighton

A troubled NHS trust has apologised to the family of a man who died after a series of potentially fatal delays to treat a tumour, in a case that is being investigated by police as possible corporate manslaughter.

Richard Harris, 71, died last July after a series of errors in the neurosurgery department at the Royal Sussex County hospital in Brighton, which is part of University Hospitals Sussex NHS foundation trust (UHSussex).