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Sir Keir Starmer and Labour have accepted hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations from a wealthy climate activist who has also been funnelling money to Just Stop Oil – a group condemned by the party.

Ecotricity, a company founded by Dale Vince, gave more than £20,000 to Sir Keir Starmer during Labour’s 2020 leadership contest. Since the last election, the firm has given £360,000 to the party. Last October, a further £10,000 was donated to deputy leader Angela Rayner.

Mr Vince, the chairman of Forest Green Rovers football club, is also one of the biggest backers of Just Stop Oil – a campaign group whose protesters have carried out a series of stunts, including gluing themselves to roads and throwing a can of soup over a painting by Vincent van Gogh, to rally against the use of fossil fuels.

Forest Green Rovers v Plymouth Argyle - The New Lawn Stadium, Nailsworth, Britain - November 16, 2019 Forest Green Rovers Chairman Dale Vince
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Forest Green Rovers Chairman Dale Vince

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Sir Keir has previously condemned Just Stop Oil activists, saying they were “wrong” and “arrogant”, while shadow justice secretary Steve Reed has labelled the group “eco-zealots” and called for a “clamp down on their disruptive nonsense”.

In an interview with Sky News, Mr Vince confirmed he provided the protest group with “tens of thousands” of pounds to get started and gave them an additional lifeline in November when their funding ran out.

He said he had also given money to Extinction Rebellion and Sea Shepherd because he thought it was important to donate to direct action groups.

Referring to Just Stop Oil, he said: “I understand why they do what they do. It’s what they have in their power to do. Whereas big business has different powers to pursue its agenda, and we have no real answer to that except sometimes to take to the streets.”

He did say, however, that he sometimes had issues with their tactics.

“I have disagreements with them from time to time,” Mr Vince said. “When they were smashing bank windows I did say publicly I didn’t think it was the right thing to do.”

Read more:
Company with no staff or website donates hundreds of thousands to Labour MPs
Revealed: The biggest donors to MPs since the last election

MPs earn £17.1m on top of their salaries since the last election

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The money flowing into Westminster

Mr Vince added that – while people had mixed views on the disruption that Just Stop Oil had caused – “we’ve reached a point where taking to the streets is the only power we’ve got”.

He asked: “We’ve just given permission to a new coal mine in the teeth of climate crisis. What are we to think and do about that?”

Donations to the Labour Party, meanwhile, were intended to advance a progressive political agenda, Mr Vince said.

The entrepreneur said he gave money to Labour in order “to help them win, to help them into government so they have the chance to deliver their agenda, which is my agenda, social justice and a green economy”.

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Who are Just Stop Oil?

Founded by Mr Vince in 1995, Ecotricity now supplies energy to about 200,000 homes and businesses in the UK. The company employs more than 800 people.

He said he has only spoken to Sir Keir on two occasions and only met him once, despite the £20,000 donation.

“I’m a particular fan of his, the way he goes about things and the things he says. I think he’d be a great prime minister,” he said.

Back in October, during a phone-in on LBC, Sir Keir dismissed the actions of Just Stop Oil activists as “wrong” and said he would continue with Conservative plans for stiff sentences for climate protesters who block roads.

“I think it’s arrogant of those gluing themselves to the road to think they’re the only people that have got the answer to this. They haven’t got the answer.”

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Zelenskyy is racing to beat Donald Trump’s peace plan deadline – but what will Russia do?

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Zelenskyy is racing to beat Donald Trump's peace plan deadline – but what will Russia do?

Washington woke up this morning to a flurry of developments on Ukraine.

It was the middle of the night in DC when a tweet dropped from Ukraine’s national security advisor, Rustem Umerov.

He said that the US and Ukraine had reached a “common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva.”

He added that Volodymyr Zelenskyy would travel to America “at the earliest suitable date in November to complete final steps and make a deal with President Trump”.

Ukraine latest: ‘Delicate’ deal details must be sorted, White House says

By sunrise in Washington, a US official was using similar but not identical language to frame progress.

The official, speaking anonymously to US media, said that Ukraine had “agreed” to Trump’s peace proposal “with some minor details to be worked out”.

More on Donald Trump

In parallel, it’s emerged that talks have been taking place in Abu Dhabi. The Americans claim to have met both Russian and Ukrainian officials there, though the Russians have not confirmed attendance.

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Peace deal ‘agreement’: What we know

“I have nothing to say. We are following the media reports,” Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, told Russian state media.

Trump is due to travel to his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago tonight, where he will remain until Sunday.

He set a deadline of Thursday – Thanksgiving – for some sort of agreement on his plan.

We know the plan has been changed from its original form, but it’s clear that Zelenskyy wants to be seen to agree to something quickly – that would go down well with President Trump.

Read more:
US hails ‘tremendous progress’ on Ukraine peace plan

In full: Europe’s 28-point counter proposal

My sense is that Zelenskyy will try to get to Mar-a-Lago as soon as he can. Before Thursday would be a push but would meet Trump’s deadline.

It will then be left for the Russians to state their position on the revised document.

All indications are that they will reject it. But maybe the secret Abu Dhabi talks will yield something.

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Four more arrests made over Louvre heist as £76m haul remains missing

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Four more arrests made over Louvre heist as £76m haul remains missing

Four more arrests have been made by French police investigating the Louvre museum heist.

Two men and two women from the Paris region were detained on Tuesday, prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.

Ms Beccuau’s statement did not say what role the quartet are suspected of having played in the robbery. The two men are aged 38 and 39, and the two women are aged 31 and 40.

They are being interrogated by police, who can hold them for questioning for 96 hours.

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Louvre: How ‘heist of the century’ unfolded

The latest arrests come after investigating magistrates filed preliminary charges against three men and one woman who were arrested last month.

Some of the French Crown Jewels, worth an estimated £76m, were stolen in the audacious October raid.

The haul – which included a diamond and emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise, jewels linked to 19th-century Queens Marie-Amelie and Hortense, and Empress Eugenie’s pearl and diamond tiara – has not been recovered.

The heist was pulled off in mere minutes last month – and took place while the Louvre was open to visitors, raising doubts over the credibility of the world’s most-visited museum as a guardian for its priceless works.

On Sunday 19 October, two men used a stolen furniture lift to access the second floor Galerie d’Apollon.

They then cracked open display cases with angle grinders before escaping with their loot and fleeing on the back of two scooters driven by accomplices.

Read more:
Louvre director offers to resign
Gallery closed as structure in ‘dire state’

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Moment thieves escape Louvre in jewel heist

The Paris prosecutor previously said the robbery appeared to be the work of small-time criminals rather than professional gangsters.

Speaking shortly after the heist, art detective Arthur Brand told Sky News that detectives faced a “race against time” to recover the stolen treasure.

“These crown jewels are so famous, you just cannot sell them,” Mr Brand said. “The only thing they can do is melt the silver and gold down, dismantle the diamonds, try to cut them. That’s the way they will probably disappear forever.

“They [the police] have a week. If they catch the thieves, the stuff might still be there. If it takes longer, the loot is probably gone and dismantled. It’s a race against time.”

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Controversial US and Israeli-backed aid operation the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to close

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Controversial US and Israeli-backed aid operation the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to close

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial US and Israeli-backed aid distribution group, has said it will permanently cease operations.

Set up as an alternative to United Nations aid programmes in May, GHF’s executive director John Acree said on Monday that it “succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans”.

The foundation had already closed down aid distribution sites after US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan was agreed by Hamas and Israel in October.

The GHF which began operations in Gaza after an Israeli blockade of food deliveries, lasting nearly three months, was criticised by Palestinians, aid workers and health officials who said it forced people to risk their lives to reach the sites.

File pic: Reuters
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File pic: Reuters

According to witnesses and videos posted to social media, Israeli soldiers repeatedly opened fire at the sites, killing hundreds. The IDF denied this, saying it only fired warning shots as a crowd-control measure or if its troops were in danger.

In July, analysis from Sky News’ Data and Forensics team found that aid distributions by GHF were associated with a significant increase in deaths.

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Gaza deaths increase when aid sites open

MSF – also known as Doctors Without Borders – said in a report in August that the GHF sites “morphed into a laboratory of cruelty,” and described scenes there as “orchestrated killing”.

More on Gaza

‘We are proud,’ says GHF director

Mr Acree said in a statement through the GHF’s website that “from the outset, GHF’s goal was to meet an urgent need” and to hand over a successful aid operation to “the broader international community”.

The GHF would hand over its work to the US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center in Israel overseeing the Gaza ceasefire.

“We are winding down our operations as we have succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans,” Mr Acree said.

File pic: Reuters
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File pic: Reuters

The GHF director added: “At a critical juncture, we are proud to have been the only aid operation that reliably and safely provided free meals directly to Palestinian people in Gaza, at scale and without diversion.

“From our very first day of operations, our mission was singular: feed civilians in desperate need. We built a new model that worked, saved lives, and restored dignity to civilians in Gaza.”

According to the GHF website, the group distributed more than three million food boxes, totalling 187 million meals, and supplied 1.1 million packs of Ready-to-Use Supplementary Food (RUSF) for malnourished children.

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Israel launches strikes on Gaza
Israel strikes Beirut for first time in months

Hamas welcomes GHF closure

In a statement, Hamas welcomed the closure of GHF and accused it of being a project that “engineered starvation” in partnership with Israel.

A Hamas spokesperson said: “Since its entry into the Gaza Strip, this foundation was part of the occupation’s security system, which adopted distribution mechanisms entirely disconnected from humanitarian principles, and created dangerous and degrading conditions for the dignity of the starving Palestinian people during their attempts to obtain a piece of bread, resulting in the killing and injury of thousands, through sniper operations and deliberate killing.”

They also called on international legal bodies to hold “this foundation and its officers accountable for their crimes against our people”.

US state department deputy spokesperson Tommy Piggot also said on X that the aid group “shared valuable lessons learned with us and our partners”.

“GHF’s model, in which Hamas could no longer loot and profit from stealing aid, played a huge role in getting Hamas to the table and achieving a ceasefire,” he added.

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