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Government signals tougher motoring rules to reduce casualties on Britain’s roads

Tougher rules on drink-driving, eye tests for older motorists and automatic emergency braking in new cars will be mandated by the government in an attempt to significantly reduce casualties on Britain’s roads. The first road safety strategy in more than a decade aims to save thousands of lives with a range of measures, from training and technology to stiffer penalties for offenders. The proposals, to be announced on Wednesday, seek to reduce fatalities and serious injuries on Britain’s roads by 65% by 2035. The number of deaths has declined since the 1970s but that improvement slowed around 2010, with 22 European countries making better progress than the UK since then, according to the Department for Transport. The government will consult on lowering the drink-drive limit in England and Wales, which has remained unchanged since 1967 and is the highest in Europe, at 35 micrograms of alcohol per 100ml of breath. It could be cut to 22 micrograms, in line with the limit in Scotland since 2014. Convicted drink-drive offenders could be forced to use an “alcolock” to be allowed to drive again – a device that only allows a vehicle to start when the driver passes a breath test. Suspected drink- or drug-driving offenders could have their licenses suspended pending confirmation of roadside tests to prevent further accidents before they are convicted or cleared. Fines will be doubled for uninsured drivers, while penalty points will be incurred for not wearing a seatbelt, on top of the current fines. Young and new drivers could be required to undertake a three-to-six-month minimum learning period to allow them to develop skills in varied conditions such as night driving, adverse weather and heavy traffic. Meanwhile, as the number of older drivers increases in line with the ageing population, the government will propose mandatory eyesight exams for the over-70s every three years, as well as looking at options for cognitive testing. New vehicles will also need to have autonomous emergency braking (AEB), among 18 safety technologies that are now widely available in cars and mandatory in Europe, but not yet in Britain. AEB automatically slows a vehicle when sensors detect an impending collision. The change will be known as Dev’s law, in memory of the eight-year-old son of Meera Naran MBE, who has campaigned to make such safety technology mandatory since Dev’s death in a motorway collision in 2018. Ministers will also seek to amend international regulations to ensure crash testing takes account of the effects on different types of passengers, rather than using a crash test dummy based on a 75kg man. The transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, said: “Every life lost on our roads is a tragedy that devastates families and communities. For too long, progress on road safety has stalled. This strategy marks a turning point. “We are taking decisive action to make our roads safer for everyone, from new drivers taking their first lessons to older motorists wanting to maintain their independence. “The measures we are announcing today will save thousands of lives over the coming decade.” Motoring organisations welcomed the moves. Edmund King, president of the AA, said it was “a positively radical reframing of road safety which is long overdue”. Nicholas Lyes, a director at the road safety charity IAM RoadSmart, said the strategy came after “a lost decade in terms of reducing the number of killed and seriously injured on the roads”. He added: “We’re also pleased to see action being taken on drug-driving, which is a growing menace, and by giving police additional powers to take action against those caught at the roadside, it will serve notice that such dangerous behaviours will not be tolerated.” RAC road safety spokesperson Rod Dennis said: “Britain might have some of the safest roads by international standards, but on average four people are still killed and 76 seriously injured every single day.” He said the reintroduction of targets for reducing deaths was positive, and the strategy addressed many areas of concern, adding: “What we need now is for it to quickly evolve into a set of concrete actions that make the roads safer for everyone.”

European leaders rally behind Greenland as US ramps up threats

European leaders have dramatically rallied together in support of Denmark and Greenland after one of Donald Trump’s leading aides suggested the US may be willing to seize control of the Arctic territory by force. Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, and Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, declared that Greenland – a semi-autonomous territory of the kingdom of Denmark – “belongs to its people”, in a rare European rebuke to the White House. “It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland,” the three leaders said in a statement on Tuesday, made jointly with the prime ministers of Denmark, Italy, Poland and Spain. Later in the evening, Starmer repeated British support for Denmark at a press conference in Paris where Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were present. “I’ve been very clear as to what my position, the position of the UK government, is,” the British leader said. But, anxious to avoid deepening the transatlantic rift, Starmer, Macron and Merz chose to focus on making fresh security commitments to Ukraine, at an event aimed at bolstering support for Kyiv planned before the Greenland crisis broke. The European declaration emerged in response to renewed US demands to seize control of the self-governing territory in the aftermath of the capture of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro by the US military. On Monday night, when asked to rule out using force, the US president’s influential deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, said “nobody [was] going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland”. In an interview with CNN, Miller said military intervention would not be needed in order to gain control over Greenland because of its small population. A day earlier, Trump had said that the US needed Greenland “very badly”, renewing fears of a US invasion of the largely autonomous island in an effort to take control of its oil, gas and rare earths as the polar ice cap melts. It prompted alarm in Denmark, and a warning from Mette Frederiksen, the country’s prime minister, that an attack on Greenland would risk the collapse of the Nato military alliance. It would, she said, be the end of “everything”. That was followed by an intense diplomatic effort, which led to the joint European leaders’ statement in support of Copenhagen, released before the international summit in Paris discussing security guarantees for Ukraine. The European leaders emphasised that security in the Arctic had to be achieved collectively with Nato allies, rather than by the US seizing control of another Nato member’s territory. “Nato has made clear that the Arctic region is a priority and European allies are stepping up,” the statement said. “We and many other allies have increased our presence, activities and investments, to keep the Arctic safe and to deter adversaries.” Denmark and Greenland asked to meet the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, urgently to “discuss the significant statement made by the United States about Greenland”, Greenland’s foreign minister, Vivian Motzfeldt, wrote on social media. Lord Ricketts, a former UK national security adviser, warned that if the US were to annex Greenland it would be disastrous for Nato, amounting to, “for all practical purposes, the end of an alliance which is based essentially on trust”. Security relationships such as the coalition of the willing in support of Ukraine, led by the UK and France and supported by Germany, would “take on a much greater significance alongside bilateral defence links with the US”. On Tuesday night, the White House said Trump and his team were discussing options for acquiring Greenland and that using the US military for this was “always an option”. “President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region. “The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the US military is always an option at the commander-in-chief’s disposal,” the White House said in a statement in response to queries from Reuters. Earlier, Miller had suggested that Denmark does not have a right to the Arctic territory, which is a former Danish colony. Copenhagen continues to control Greenland’s foreign and security policy. Asked whether military action against Greenland was off the table, he incorrectly stated that its population was 30,000 when in fact it is 57,000, saying: “What do you mean, military action against Greenland? Greenland has a population of 30,000 people. “The real question is what right does Denmark have to assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim? What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark?” There was, he said, “no need to even think or talk about” a military operation in Greenland, adding: “Nobody is going to fight the US militarily over the future of Greenland. That doesn’t make any sense.” Miller’s interview was conducted after his wife, the rightwing podcaster Katie Miller, posted a map on X of Greenland draped in a US flag with the caption “SOON”. Naaja H Nathanielsen, the Greenlandic minister for business, mineral resources, energy, justice and gender equality, told the Guardian: “The people of Greenland take this potential threat very hard and are anxious and afraid.” Greenland long been a “good American ally”, Nathanielsen said, but this “does not transfer into an acceptance of – or interest in – becoming Americans”. She added: “We are very few, but we are a people in our own right and insist that we are the ones to decide the future of Greenland.” Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, also made a strong statement in which he urged Trump to give up his “fantasies about annexation” and accused the US of “completely and utterly unacceptable” rhetoric. “Enough is enough,” he said. Inuit people are understood to have lived in Greenland since as early as 2500 BCE. Modern colonisation began in 1721, when Hans Egede arrived, acting with the support of what was then Denmark-Norway. It remained a colony until 1953, when it became part of the kingdom of Denmark. During the second world war, when Denmark was occupied by Germany, Greenland was occupied by the US and returned to Denmark in 1945. The US has had a military base in Greenland, which is important for its ballistic missile early warning system, at Pituffik (previously Thule) since the cold war. In recent years there has been growing support for Greenlandic independence, particularly after revelations about Denmark’s treatment of Greenlandic people – including the IUD scandal – during and since colonial rule. But amid the spectre of Trump’s threat, Greenland in March formed a new four-party coalition government in a show of national unity, with the first page of the coalition agreement stating: “Greenland belongs to us.”

Wyoming supreme court strikes down near-total abortion bans

Abortion will stay legal in Wyoming after the state’s supreme court struck down two near-total abortion bans on Tuesday, ruling that the laws violate the constitution of the profoundly conservative state. In a 4-1 decision, the justices decided that the two bans – which include the nation’s first exclusive ban on abortion pills – violated a 2012 state constitutional amendment. That amendment affirmed competent adults’ right to make their own healthcare decisions and was originally passed as part of Wyoming’s response to the Affordable Care Act. “Today, the Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed what we’ve always known to be true: abortion is essential health care, and the government should not interfere in personal decisions about our health,” Julie Burkhart, president of the Wyoming abortion clinic Wellspring Health Access, said in a statement. “This ruling is a victory for the fundamental right of people across Wyoming to make decisions about their own lives and health.” One of the laws overturned Tuesday sought to ban abortion except to protect a pregnant woman’s life or in cases involving rape or incest. The other law would have made Wyoming the only state to explicitly ban abortion pills. (Notably, other states have instituted de facto bans on abortion medication by broadly prohibiting abortion). In the four years since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, unleashing a wave of state-level abortion restrictions, abortion pills have grown increasingly popular, especially as abortion providers have begun to mail them into states that ban the procedure. Wellspring Health Access, the state’s lone abortion clinic, sued in the wake of the bans – alongside the abortion access advocacy group Chelsea’s Fund and four women, including two obstetricians. Attorneys for Wyoming argued that the bans could not violate the Wyoming constitution because the state does not view abortion as healthcare. “If as the state contends, the people did not intend to include abortion care among the health care decisions this constitutional amendment protects, the solution is not for this Court to add language to the constitution. It is beyond our power to do that,” the justices wrote in a footnote in their majority opinion. “The Legislature, however, could put the question to the people of Wyoming in the form of a constitutional amendment that clearly states what it seeks to accomplish.” Mark Gordon, Wyoming’s Republican governor, called the ruling “profoundly unfortunate” in a statement. Gordon urged state legislators, who will convene in February, to propose a constitutional amendment that Wyoming voters could approve in the upcoming November elections. “A constitutional amendment taken to the people of Wyoming would trump any and all judicial decisions,” Gordon said. “Every year that we delay the proper resolution of this issue results in more deaths of unborn children. This is a dilemma of enormous moral and social consequence.” Such an amendment would require a two-thirds vote to be introduced for consideration during the monthlong legislative session devoted primarily to the state budget. But it would almost certainly have wide support in the Republican-dominated statehouse. Wyoming is far from the only state now considering amending its state constitution in 2026 to include or exclude abortion rights. Advocates are now working to get abortion-related measures on the ballot in Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Oregon and Virginia. Nevada and Missouri are already set to send such measures to voters. Abortion has remained legal in Wyoming since the Teton county district judge, Melissa Owens, in Jackson blocked the bans while the lawsuit challenging them went ahead. Owens struck down the laws as unconstitutional in 2024. Last year, Wyoming passed additional laws requiring abortion clinics to be licensed surgical centers and women to get ultrasounds before having medication abortions. The supreme court ruling means those limitations could take effect, although a judge in a separate lawsuit has blocked them from taking effect while the case proceeds. Anti-abortion advocates also suffered a setback in Washington DC on Tuesday, as Donald Trump told Republicans that they had to be “flexible” on the Hyde amendment, a decades-old policy that blocks federal dollars from being used to pay for abortions. “You have to be a little flexible on Hyde,” Trump told a gathered group of Republicans as he talked about GOP strategizing around healthcare and the Affordable Care Act. Last year, Republicans allowed subsidies that kept Affordable Care Act premiums low to expire, sending the cost of premiums soaring for millions of Americans. “You gotta be a little flexible,” Trump continued. “You gotta work something. You gotta use ingenuity.” The warning enraged abortion opponents, who have long grown frustrated with Trump’s tendency to flip-flop on abortion. Although Trump’s three supreme court nominees all voted to overturn Roe, Trump tried to downplay and avoid the issue as much as possible during his 2024 campaign. “For decades, opposition to taxpayer funding of abortion and support for the Hyde Amendment has been an unshakeable bedrock principle and a minimum standard in the Republican Party,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the powerful anti-abortion group Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement following Trump’s comments. “To suggest Republicans should be ‘flexible’ is an abandonment of this decades-long commitment.”

Nicolás Maduro ‘tries to imitate my dance’, says Trump in latest accusation

As if his humiliation was not complete, Nicolás Maduro is facing a new charge: copying Donald Trump’s dance moves. The US president on Tuesday accused the ousted Venezuelan leader, who faces terrorism and drug trafficking charges, of imitating Trump’s signature hip-swaying and stiff arm-waving. “He gets up there and he tries to imitate my dance a little bit,” Trump told a gathering of congressional Republicans in Washington. The jibe appeared to reference a report that Maduro’s regular public dancing – he appeared on stage to a techno remix of his mantra “No War, Yes Peace” – and other displays of nonchalance in recent weeks contributed to the White House’s decision to abduct him. The late Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s mentor and role model, frequently danced at rallies, but Trump’s team felt Maduro was mocking a buildup of US military force and demands for him to step down, according to the New York Times. US forces seized Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in a raid on Saturday that left dozens dead and stunned Venezuela’s government but left it in place. Trump’s comments appeared designed to add to Maduro’s humiliation a day after his arraignment hearing at a federal court in Manhattan. Speaking at the rebranded Trump-Kennedy Centre in Washington, the US president also made darker accusations about Venezuela’s deposed dictator. “He’s a violent guy, and he’s killed millions of people. He’s tortured – they have a torture chamber in the middle of Caracas that they’re closing up.” Trump did not elaborate on this claim. Trump has faced widespread scorn for his dancing at rallies, including to the disco song YMCA, but supporters have lauded and copied it. The president said his wife, Melania, considered his signature moves to be unpresidential. “She hates it when I dance. I said, ‘everybody wants me to dance, darling’.” He said the first lady replied: “They don’t like it. They’re just being nice to you.” Trump told her she was wrong. “The place goes crazy. They’re screaming, ‘Dance, please!’”

Trump touts ‘brilliant’ Venezuela attack in remarks at House Republicans retreat

Donald Trump has received rapturous acclaim from congressional Republicans as he touted a “brilliant” and “incredible” attack on Venezuela that led to the capture of its leader, Nicolás Maduro. The US president is facing accusations from former allies, such as ex-congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, that he abandoned his “America First” commitment to avoid foreign entanglements and eschew regime change. But when Trump delivered a near 90-minute speech to House Republicans at their annual retreat in Washington on Tuesday, he was given a warm reception and there was little sign that the deadly weekend assault on Venezuela had caused cracks in his support. “It was an amazing military feat that took place,” Trump said, prompting a whoop from the audience and sustained applause. “Well, thank you. You know, people are saying it goes down with one of the most incredible – it was so complex, 152 airplanes – many talk about boots on the ground – we had a lot of boots on the ground but it was amazing.” The president celebrated the lack of fatalities among US special forces while acknowledging that troops guarding Maduro died in the assault. “Nobody was killed, and on the other side a lot of people were killed. Unfortunately: I say that. “Soldiers – Cubans, mostly Cubans, but many, many killed, and they knew we were coming and they were protected and our guys weren’t. You know, our guys are jumping out of helicopters and they’re not protected, and they were. But it was so brilliant.” Trump complained that Chuck Schumer, the minority leader in the Senate, and other Democrats failed to thank him for removing a repressive dictator. He then earned laughter from House Republicans by making reference to Maduro’s dancing. “They’ve been after this guy for years and years and years and you know he’s a violent guy. He gets up there and he tries to imitate my dance a little bit. But he’s a violent guy and he’s killed millions of people. They have a torture chamber in the middle of Caracas that they’re closing up, but he’s tortured people.” Maduro regularly appeared on stage dancing to a techno remix of his mantra “no war, yes peace” as US forces massed in the Caribbean in late 2025. Trump is known for bopping to the disco song YMCA at his rallies. The New York Times has reported that Maduro’s regular public dancing and other displays of indifference helped convince some in Trump’s inner circle that he was mocking them and failing to take their threats seriously. The president went on to claim, without evidence, that the “radical left” have paid protesters to carry “Free Maduro” signs. “Do you know they’re paid when they have brand new beautiful printed signs by like the highest quality printer?” Trump was speaking at the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, recently renamed by his handpicked board as the “Trump-Kennedy Center”, to rally House Republicans ahead of November’s crucial midterm elections. Republicans must win, he warned, or he will be impeached by Democrats for a historic third time. “You gotta win the midterms ‘cos, if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just gonna be – I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me,” he said. “I’ll get impeached.” Trump’s agenda is on the line in the elections, when all the seats in the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate’s seats will be contested. He urged Republicans to unite on issues ranging from gender politics to healthcare and election reforms, and to sell his policies to a public restive about cost of living issues. Trump predicted an epic win but also expressed concerns about historical precedent that the party of the sitting president usually fares poorly. “They say that when you win the presidency, you lose the midterm. I wish you could explain to me what the hell’s going on with the mind of the public.” He urged Republicans: “You have so many good nuggets. You have to use them. If you can sell them we’re going to win. We’ve had the most successful first year of any president in history and it should be a positive.” Trump’s digressive, freewheeling speech came on the fifth anniversary of the January 6 US Capitol attack by supporters furious at what he falsely claimed was a fraudulent election loss to Joe Biden in 2020. He was impeached for the second time over the riot. Trump claimed: “Do you know that the news never reported the words, ‘Walk or march peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol’ … they never reported it – it’s a scandal. The unselect committee never reported that. They never reported that Nancy Pelosi was offered 10,000 soldiers.” Trump pardoned nearly 1,600 January 6 rioters on his first day back in office last January. On Tuesday, he repeated his false claim, “the election was rigged”, told Republicans to insist on voter ID, and again railed against mail-in voting. He also mused about unconstitutionally seeking a third term as president. “I guess I’m not allowed to run,” he said. “I’m not sure. Is there a little something out there that I’m not allowed to run? But let’s assume I was allowed to run. There’s gonna be a constitutional movement.” Now 79, Trump claimed that he had successfully passed cognitive tests that Democrats such as Tim Walz, Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom would surely fail. “Do you think Walz could pass a cognitive test? Do you think Kamala could? I don’t think Gavin could. He’s got a good line of crap but, other than that, he couldn’t pass.” He also returned to the theme of his dancing. While discussing his administration’s banning of transgender women from women’s and girls’ sports, Trump performed an exaggerated imitation of what he said was a trans weightlifter. “My wife hates when I do this,” he said. “She said: ‘It’s so unpresidential.’” Trump added: “She hates it when I dance.” He also asked: “Could you imagine FDR dancing?” President Franklin D Roosevelt, who was in office from 1933 until 1945, was paralysed from the waist down by polio in 1921 and used a wheelchair.

Armed militias deployed in Venezuela as regime attempts to impose authority

Venezuela’s rulers have deployed armed militias to patrol streets, operate checkpoints and check people’s phones in a crackdown to consolidate authority after the US attack on Caracas. Paramilitary groups known as colectivos criss-crossed the capital with motorbikes and assault rifles on Tuesday in a show of force to stifle any dissent or perception of a power vacuum. The patrols stopped and searched cars and demanded access to people’s phones to check their contacts, messages and social media posts in a stark demonstration to the population that the regime remained in charge despite the abduction of president Nicolás Maduro. Anyone who was suspected of supporting Saturday’s US raid was liable for arrest, said Mirelvis Escalona, 40, a resident in the western Caracas neighbourhood of Catia. “There’s fear. There are armed civilians here. You never know what might happen, they might attack people.” A semblance of normality returned to much of the city, with shops and bakeries reopening and people going to work – but uncertainty over what will happen next created a febrile mood. The interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has sought to project a sense of calm and control since being sworn in on Monday but there was no disguising the government’s shock and jitteriness. In addition to the humiliation of Maduro’s appearance in a New York court on narco-trafficking charges, the authorities face the risk of a fresh US attack, economic collapse, internal regime fracture and the return of overseas-based opposition leaders. Gunfire erupted on Monday night when security forces shot at unauthorised drones which reportedly were mistaken for another US operation. “There was no confrontation, the entire country remains completely calm,” Simon Arrechider, the deputy information minister, told reporters. But it is a tense calm. On Monday at least 14 journalists and media employees, including 13 members of international media organisations, were detained in Caracas. All but one were later released. An emergency decree has sought to stamp out any public celebration of Maduro’s ouster and ordered police to seek and detain “everyone involved in the promotion or support for the armed attack by the United States”. Footage posted on social media showed colectivos – some wearing masks – blocking highways, roving pro-opposition neighbourhoods and questioning residents, prompting people to warn friends and family via WhatsApp and other platforms to leave phones at home or to scrub them of political content. The interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, posted a photo of himself posing with police who cradled weapons and chanted “always loyal, never traitors”. Jeaneth Fuentes, 53, a doctor at a private clinic in Caracas, said the presence of armed groups – some in uniform, others in civilian clothes – made her commute to and from work feel like a gamble. “It’s frightening, terrifying.” The gunfire on Monday night compounded the sense that anything might happen, she said. “I can’t plan, it’s living each minute at a time.” She leaves home only for work, and never after 6pm. Fuentes expressed hope the current turmoil might lead to the end of rule by chavismo, the movement Hugo Chávez brought to power in 1999. “If something was built over so many years, it can’t be torn down in a day.” Government supporters, in contrast, condemned the abduction of Maduro and said they would defend Venezuela’s sovereignty. “There is a fighting spirit inherent in the Venezuelan people,” said Willmer Flores, a finance ministry employee. “We are the liberators of America, and we are not intimidated by anything.” He pledged solidarity with Maduro. With the Trump administration warning of potential fresh military strikes, and a blockade on oil exports squeezing revenues, there is speculation about divisions within the regime over how to accommodate Trump while retaining anti-imperialist credentials. Unlike Rodríguez, who faces no criminal charges in the US, ministers like Cabello who are accused of narco-trafficking could lose not just their power but their liberty. Another concern for the government is María Corina Machado, the fugitive opposition leader who mobilised millions of voters last year, slipped to Oslo to collect her Nobel peace price and is now vowing to return. “I’m planning to go as soon as possible back home,” she told Fox News. “We believe that this transition should move forward,” she told Fox News in an interview. “We won an election by a landslide under fraudulent conditions. In free and fair elections, we will win over 90% of the votes.” Trump however has publicly dismissed Machado, saying she lacks support in Venezuela, and tacitly endorsed continued chavista rule under Rodríguez – on condition she meets US demands, including favoured access for US oil companies.