Censorship of Tiktok. Rumours circulating of the Chinese-owned video sharing app leaking data to third-party sources meant that governments took action. New Zealand, France and the United Kingdom all banned the social media platform on government phones, citing ‘security’ reasons.
The record breaking Oscars. The 95th Academy Awards were record breaking thanks to Everything Everywhere All at Once. Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian to win the Best Actress award for her performance and Ke Huy Quan won Best Supporting Actor, becoming the first Vietnamese actor to do so.
Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh has a nice ring to it. #Oscars
— The Academy (@TheAcademy) March 14, 2023
Photo Credit: Michelle Watt pic.twitter.com/mB0OG6afj4
Police lose sex offenders. BBC News’ Freedom of Information request revealed that 729 sex offenders from 45 police forces who were under police supervision between 2019 and 2021. It was also noted that 1,500 offenders notified the police about legal name changes.
2023 Scottish National Party leadership elections. The Scottish Parliament voted to elect the SNP’s leader Humza Yousaf as the First Minister of Scotland. He became the first ethnic minority and Muslim to hold the position.
Trans ban on Athletes. World Athletics announced that any trans athlete that has gone through male puberty will not be able to compete in female world ranking competitions.
Gary Lineker shut down by BBC. Following Gary Lineker’s criticism of the government’s controversial asylum policy, he was suspended by the BBC pending investigation. This led to other BBC Sport commentators and pundits, such as Alan Shearer and Ian Wright, to walk out in support of the star. Tim Davie, the BBC director general, had to apologise for the coverage of the weekend’s Match of the Day programme running for 20 minutes due to the disruption.
MI5 and the Manchester Bombing. The inquiry, led by Sir John Suanders, into the Manchester Bombing found that there was “significant missed opportunity” from MI5 and that they failed to act quickly enough. The inquiry wrote that “actionable intelligence could have been obtained” which may have led to actions preventing the attack.
