Vatican keeps St Peter’s Basilica open all night as thousands queue to pay respects

The Vatican has kept St Peter’s Basilica open nearly all night as thousands of the faithful flocked to pay their final respects to the late Pope Francis.

The Pope’s coffin has been brought to St Peter’s Basilica, where it will lie in state for public viewings until his funeral on Saturday.

After the Vatican suggested that visitor hours could be extended beyond midnight, it emerged on Thursday that St Peter’s had been kept open all night, closing only briefly between 6am and 7am, after more than 20,000 people paid their respects during the first eight hours of public viewing.

World leaders, cardinals and crowds of pilgrims are expected to attend the funeral itself, which will be held at 10am on Saturday in St Peter’s Square.

The Prince of Wales will join the likes of Donald Trump, Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Volodymyr Zelensky to pay their respects to the pontiff, who died aged 88 on Monday.

Francis is said to have shown the first signs of sudden illness two hours before passing, according to the Vatican news outlet, which reported he made a gesture of farewell with his hand to his nurse before falling into a coma.

Jamie Vardy to leave Leicester after 13 years at club

Jamie Vardy will depart Leicester City at the end of the season after 13 years with the club.

A transformative figure at the King Power Stadium, Vardy has made nearly 500 appearances during a trophy-laden spell in the east Midlands.

The 38-year-old has scored nearly 200 goals since arriving for £1m from Fleetwood Town in 2012, firing Leicester to a remarkable Premier League triumph in 2016.

The England international also won the FA Cup, Community Shield and the Championship twice while with the Foxes, rising from non-league football to be named Premier League player of the season and FWA Footballer of the Year.

His final game at the King Power Stadium will be the Premier League clash with Ipswich on Sunday 18 May.

“To the fans of Leicester, [I am] gutted that this day is coming, but I knew it was going to come eventually,” Vardy said. “After 13 unbelievable years, with lots of success, some downs but majority highs, it’s time to call it a day which I’m devastated about.

“But the timing is right. I want to thank you all for taking me in as one of your own. Leicester will always have a place in my heart and I will make sure I am following for the years to come in what I hope is more success for the club. For now, this is my goodbye. But I hope to see you soon, I promise.”

News of Vardy’s departure comes just days after Leicester’s relegation back to the Championship was confirmed.

The striker leaves the club as its record Premier League scorer, and is two short of 200 goals overall for the club. Only three players (Harry Kane, Sergio Aguero and Thierry Henry) have scored more Premier League goals than his 143 with all coming for a single club, while he is the only player to score in 11 consecutive Premier League games.

Vardy scored 24 times in the 2015-16 Premier League campaign as Leicester secured their first top-flight title. He won the golden boot in the 2019-20 season before helping the Foxes to FA Cup success under Brendan Rodgers a year later, in the process becoming the first footballer to feature all the way from the preliminary rounds of the competition to the final.

Vardy was the last remaining player from Leicester’s title triumph at the club. He captained them to promotion from the Championship last season, though could not help them retain their top-flight status for next season.

Leicester City chairman, Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, said: “Jamie is unique. He is a special player and an even more special person. He holds a place in the hearts of everyone connected to Leicester City, and he certainly has my deepest respect and affection. I am endlessly grateful for everything he has given to this football club.”

Flight crew let passenger die while others disembarked, says family

A 62-year-old man in the throes of a life-threatening medical emergency died after an American Airlines flight crew failed to call for help until after the plane landed, taxied to the gate and all other passengers had disembarked – by which time it was too late to save him, his family alleges.

John William Cannon suffered a fatal heart attack in the back of an ambulance as EMTs rushed him to Mercy Medical Center in Durango, Colorado, according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Cannon’s son, who is now also the administrator of his estate.

The Kentucky resident was in town to attend his best friend’s daughter’s wedding, attorney Joseph LoRusso, who is representing the Cannons in court, told The Independent.

LoRusso, himself a commercial airline-rated pilot, described the apparent lack of urgency in summoning assistance for the elder Cannon as “unbelievably frustrating.”

“How long does it take to deboard an airplane? 20, 30 minutes? That’s critical time,” LoRusso said on Wednesday.

Cabin crews are trained in CPR, and all commercial airliners have been required since 2004 to carry defibrillators onboard, LoRusso went on.

“Nobody’s expecting a flight attendant to be a doctor, but you have to at least attempt a recovery,” he said.

If things had played out differently, Cannon would “probably” be alive today, according to co-counsel Jessica McBryant.

“The emotional side of this is not just in losing a family member, but in how it went down,” McBryant told The Independent. “How alone and scared he must have been.”

In an email, an American Airlines spokesperson said simply, “We are reviewing the complaint.”

April 28, 2023, began like any other day for Cannon, who, at about 12:30 p.m., caught American Airlines flight 1444 from Louisville, Kentucky, to Dallas-Fort Worth, where he would get a connection to Durango, according to his son’s complaint, which was filed initially in Denver County District Court and removed to Denver federal court Tuesday. While deplaning, Cannon fainted and collapsed on the jetway, the complaint states.

It says American employees helped Cannon back to his feet, then, just over two minutes later, sent him off so he wouldn’t miss his connecting flight.

During the flight to Durango, Cannon “entered a stage of medical crisis which resulted in him becoming unresponsive,” the complaint continues.

“Despite Mr. Cannon’s escalating medical crisis, the… flight crew delayed requesting medical assistance until after the aircraft had landed, taxied to the gate, and all other passengers had deplaned,” it goes on.

One of the crew members told emergency dispatchers that Cannon was “in and out of consciousness with labored breathing,” according to the complaint. Firefighters were first on the scene, and gave Cannon oxygen while waiting for medics to arrive, the complaint states. It says they then removed Cannon from the aircraft and loaded him into an ambulance, where he soon went into ventricular fibrillation arrest, the most frequent cause of sudden cardiac death, according to the Mayo Clinic.

“The ambulance crew performed approximately ten minutes of chest compressions, administered two doses of epinephrine, and delivered multiple Automated External Defibrillator (AED) shocks,” the complaint states.

However, it says, their efforts were ultimately for naught. Cannon was pronounced dead at 1:29 am the following morning.

Cannon’s best friend was waiting for him at the gate when the flight landed and disgorged everyone aboard, except for Cannon, according to LoRusso.

“Next thing he knows, EMS pulls up and they’re pulling John off,” he told The Independent. “It was business as usual until they could get all the passengers away, and then, all of a sudden, it became an emergency… It seems like it’s become a persistent issue, where these flight crews are ‘event averse.’ Like, if you downplay things and attempt to sweep them under the rug, that’s the go-to play these days.”

LoRusso said American should never have allowed Cannon to get on his connecting flight in Dallas, given his condition. To that end, the lawsuit charges the airline with, among other things, negligently failing to deny boarding to an individual in medical crisis.

“It’s important for crews to realize that if someone’s in a medical crisis, they’re well within their rights to say, ‘We’re not going to board you,” LoRusso said. “If somebody has labored breathing, in what world would you put him in an airliner, in a cabin pressurized up to 8,000, 9,000 feet? That’s crazy.”

Additionally, the suit calls American out for failing to give reasonable first aid onboard the aircraft, failing to take reasonable steps to turn… Cannon over to a physician in a timely manner, failing to pay appropriate attention to [Cannon’s] medical condition, and failing to prioritize… Cannon in the deboarding process once he exhibited signs of extreme physical distress onboard the aircraft.

Last year, relatives of a 14-year-old boy who went into cardiac arrest and died aboard an American flight from Honduras to New York City sued the airline, saying the plane’s defibrillator was faulty. The case was later dismissed over a jurisdictional issue.

Cannon’s family is seeking unspecified damages for mental anguish, suffering, bereavement, loss of companionship, attorneys’ fees and funeral expenses.

“The ultimate goal of any lawsuit is to make things safer in the future,” McBryant told The Independent. “While this case is about John Cannon and his family, we want American Airlines to… hold people accountable for what happened so it doesn’t happen again.”

‘Girl math’ has to go: The Revolut CEO who has never applied for a job

Imagine your journey into your current job. Did you have to go through multiple interviews? Perhaps even apply for dozens of roles before you snared the right one?

If so, you might benefit from a different approach – at least, according to the experiences of one very successful figure in the finance world.

Yana Shkrebenkova is the chief executive at Revolut Trading UK, the investment product arm of the company you’ll know from app stores, adverts and quite possibly your own accounts.

After undertaking a degree at Exeter University and before taking her present role, Ms Shkrebenkova had already worked with or alongside Deutsche Bank, Accenture, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs. The sum total of job applications made during her career sits at zero.

“I took advice from all my lecturers to build your network very seriously – my first job found me rather than I found the job. People I studied with referred me to Deutsche Bank,” she explained to The Independent.

“None of my jobs I’ve applied for. It’s all about network. You build it not just at work but through people you work with and all the referrals happened through people who worked with me or for me.”

Deutsche was only the beginning of the theme; working alongside employees from Accenture led to another job offer while industry upheaval beset colleagues and the wider firm alike. Then, along came a new name on the banking scene.

“Revolut came up. Somehow it found me, I was approached for the role and I’m not going to lie – when I saw CEO on the job spec I was surprised, but the recruiter was convinced, the interviewers were convinced and, by the end of the process, so was I,” she explains. The CEO title is one of two parts to the day job: Yana is also head of wealth and trading at the company, bringing the features most users actually interact with.

It’s a long way from her original tasks of reading company reports or helping large firms with digital transformation, but speaking with her, it doesn’t take long to realise that new horizons are there to be embraced, not avoided.

“I’m the most curious person you’ll probably ever meet and it drove me to new challenges. Even when I had no clue what it was I took it on,” she says. “I just jump into some opportunity and learn. Looking into something new, diving into something new…I love it.”

That’s not to say working in finance has been routine or easy all the time.

Ms Shkrebenkova isn’t afraid to acknowledge that part of it has been down to her gender and her success – an in industry where change has come slowly.

Being the only female on the team was a regular theme early in her career, while she also pointed out that once senior positions came her way she began to “realise what those articles were about” – assumptions and comments were both made, where previously male colleagues had been helpful. “I had to deal with a lot of that. I had to put pressure on myself to be better and better and not care what anyone said.

“But change is coming. I see increasing amounts of women in these rooms, at startups and venture events there are a lot more women being founders, CEOs and investors – this is great,” she points out.

Women working within is only one side of the story though, in finance terms. The other side is in what women do with their money.

In case you haven’t heard, data shows they earn better returns than men with their investments.

Revolut’s data on the subject led Ms Shkrebenkova to partner with Female Invest; ripping up the social media “girl math” tag, the idea was not just to embrace the numbers but to empower more to begin their journey of wealth-building.

“Girl math is understood differently by different people. A lot of people in the UK use it as a joke when things go wrong so no, I do not like that connotation,” she said.

“For me from Russia, I had to ask the copy guys what was wrong – I thought girl math was good thing. So it was really refreshing to see women doing well in investments…but it’s not a new thing. But it was very exciting to see that in real data and I wanted to see what could we do to empower more women.

“What i see in new investors there’s a fear, a lack of knowledge in terms of the jargon in the industry for decades distracting people and putting boundaries in. I wanted to reduce those boundaries and I guess if you use the products, we’re trying to make it easier and put as much information to allow people to learn and make decisions.

“That message empowers them, saying you’re doing really well as a cohort.”

Reducing language barriers, giving examples and increasing accessibility to investing isn’t just a women-specific thing; if the UK government are serious about developing a culture of investing then education has to be far better for everyone, and start far earlier.

For companies like Revolut, the challenge has to be about how to contribute to that discussion and education without appearing – or better yet, without being – self serving over the matter. After all, they are an investment platform, among other things.

Ms Shkrebenkova gives the example that some people already invest without knowing it, due to their pensions, and speaks of “learning on the job” in investing: seeing when a company is in the news, what affects share prices and more.

As for her own investment ethos? Naturally, it follows that curiosity approach which dictates other areas of her professional career: what she sees, learns, takes interest in and understands of its place in the world.

And, like investing, her career is a journey, with a chief exec role just another successful step – with more to take clearly still ahead.

“Not many people ask what’s next because CEO feels like the end,” she ends our time talking by pointing out. “But I’m early in my career, I could potentially go into academia and do research. I could teach students because the energy and questions they give are a really rewarding part of this job.”

Trans woman handing out disabled toilet keys after Supreme Court ruling leaves ‘no other option’

A trans woman has resorted to handing out disabled toilet keys after she said the Supreme Court’s ruling on the definition of a woman left her community fearing for their safety and with “no other option”.

Sarah Marsh, 55, described it as an “emergency measure” taken after the UK’s highest court confirmed the terms “woman” and “sex” in the 2010 Equality Act “refer to a biological woman and biological sex” in a long-awaited judgment delivered last week.

It means that transgender women with a gender recognition certificate, like Ms Marsh, can be excluded from single-sex spaces if “proportionate”. Equalities minister Bridget Phillipson later confirmed that trans women should now use men’s toilets.

Shock morphed into fear and uncertainty for the 55-year-old, from Ely, who said: “There’s a despair to it… This could make it an offence for me to use female toilets, but I’m not male either – which would make it not possible for myself to go into female or male toilets… If I am not allowed in women’s toilets when out in public, which I have used for years without incident, and using men’s toilets would subject me to obvious danger, toilets for disabled people are the only remaining options.”

Ms Marsh said Ely Pride has sourced radar keys that enable access to public disabled loos, with a view to hand them out to any members of the trans community who need them at a demonstration in the city on Monday – and to roll the initiative out nationally, with conversations already ongoing with UK-wide groups, such as the UK Women’s March, for which Ms Marsh is city lead.

She stressed the importance of respecting the disabled community, with these keys acting only as a last resort. She also said she understands the dangers women face but argued the trans community are not a threat and that the ruling is not the solution.

In her role as trustee of the charity, Ms Marsh said she will be the first to receive a key, when she is set to say: “Now I don’t feel safe in public. Already, I have had lots of hate and avoid going into public, however, sometimes it is unavoidable and gives high toilet and safety anxiety. This key is my emergency access should I need it urgently, though I am also aware this would bring unwanted attention.”

The campaigner said access to public spaces – which is about “having access to public life” and “affects how we can fit into society” – is just one of the many major consequences the ruling will have for the trans community.

“Not only does the ruling have a direct impact on access to spaces, which changes our lives, it gives permission for people to express hate to minority groups,” she said.

Ms Marsh has faced an already “noticeable” rise in transphobia directed at her since the ruling, especially on social media. “I’ve always had death threats and assault before through being trans,” she said. “Fortunately now I pass – but this ruling opens it all up again, and means I’ll be subject to all that again… These kinds of rulings just add fuel to the fire of hate that we already have in society.”

She said she is now fearful of leaving the house due to the threat of hate and is especially afraid of going anywhere far from home due to the prospect of having to use public toilets.

And she is concerned that the ruling “opens the door” to further implications for trans people.

The keys, Ms Marsh said, is her way of trying “to help people like myself” at such a difficult time for her community.

What smart investors need to know about changing status symbols

“It’s not a bag, it’s a Birkin.”

In 2001, Sex and the City introduced us to the Hermès Birkin, with character Samantha Jones being told there was a five year waiting list for would-be buyers. The fashion set’s favourite accessory went mainstream.

The Birkin continues to sell well over 20 years later, both new and second hand. Resale values have reportedly risen faster than gold. The Birkin has helped Hermès to outperform in what has been a torrid time for luxury brands.

But how long can that appeal sustain?

A Met police colleague used a slur about a rape victim – and kept his job

I have always had this innate longing to want to help people and protect them from harm. So, when I saw a role advertised for a 999 call handler for the Metropolitan Police Service, I immediately hit “apply”.

Although the first few years were a whirlwind of new information and nerves, I truly believed I had found the career for me. And, two years ago, I could never have imagined that my relationship with the police would come to a bitter end within 18 months – simply for doing the one thing they asked of me: reporting wrongdoing.

One day in April 2023 I had settled into a shift answering emergency calls and found myself sitting next to a colleague I had never met before. Throughout the shift he made horrific and unnerving comments to me, such as “she sounds like a sl**” about a rape victim.

He typed on his phone “why don’t you f*** off back to your own country” about an immigrant and whispered “Sarah Everard turf” into my ear while I was trying to help a victim on an emergency call and he could see a map of the Clapham area on my screen. I even hung back after our shift ended to avoid him leaving, but – to my surprise – he was still outside when I exited and proceeded to follow me the beginning part of my journey home, despite him saying earlier that day that he lived in the opposite direction.

When you work in public service, you are told over and over that if you witness misconduct, you should report it – and that you have a duty to report it. I did exactly this. If you had told me back then that what I was doing would end my career and thrust me towards a mental health crisis, I would not have believed you.

Because of my report, my colleague was dismissed for gross misconduct, but later reinstated because the appeal decision-maker thought it was “too harsh” and that the original panel was “too heavily swayed” by the police movement to combat violence against women and girls. Not to mention: the Baroness Casey report, which had found the Metropolitan Police institutionally misogynistic and racist.

As you can imagine, when I found out that my former colleague would be returning to work, I was heartbroken. I really thought the Met was trying to better itself. Clearly not.

For 18 months, I tried to raise my concerns, but was ignored and silenced. I left the force in November 2024. By this stage, my mental health was near breaking point – I felt like I had been seated at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, all that time.

The College of Policing’s guidance on misconduct hearing outcomes states that misconduct proceedings “are not designed to punish police officers”. It also states that the panel should be centrally concerned with the reputation or standing of the profession, rather than the punishment of the employee.

Here we have a clear admission that reputation trumps the quality of the employees, which is clear in cases such as mine, and many others that are published online. A recent case of an officer sending unsolicited private pictures to another colleague, found proven, was deemed as “limited harm” as it was not publicly known, and the officer was given only an 18-month written warning.

We now have police employees and officers who cyber flash and vocalise racist, misogynistic and sexist opinions and still have their jobs. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, doesn’t it?

So, now I am campaigning to raise awareness on the nonsensical legislation, guidelines and policies that police forces rely on when making judgments on misconduct hearings. Sometimes it feels like my research has led me down a rabbit hole, unveiling just how much the police protect the police and how little they protect the public.

I have set up a platform called Speak Up Now, where public service workers can anonymously write in with their experiences and concerns, because I understand, first hand, just how impossible it is to hold them accountable from the inside, and if I can help others express concerns for good, then we are half way to effecting change. I have also created a petition to ask the government to reconsider the legislation and guidance that enables rogue employees to keep their jobs, in the hope that amendments will be made.

If any of the experiences I have detailed resonate with you, or if you have been on the receiving end of the failures in policing, then please do join me. If the police protect the police, then we must protect us.

Does anyone really want a Chevrolet in downtown Doncaster?

At the very considerable risk of the consequences of trying to be fair to Donald Trump, I wonder if, on the very specific case of tariffs on cars, the guy has a point? America imports a fair quantity of fine quality British vehicles, and, until very recently, the United States added an import tax of just 2.5 per cent of the cost – a trivial consideration in any case for the price-insensitive owners of Bentley Continentals, Rolls-Royce Ghosts, and Range Rovers.

In return? The British, with all the freedom granted by post-Brexit freedoms, continue to slap the same per cent tariff on imports of American-manufactured vehicles, a rate inherited from EU membership. Well, you have to ask yourself; was that fair? Of course, under the mad plans announced by Trump a couple of weeks ago, the American tariff has been ramped up to 25 per cent, which is hardly just either; but the point still stands.

So Rachel Reeves offering to cut the UK tariffs as part of a wider trade deal with America is not a bad idea. Superficially, at least, it is also quite a smart one, because UK imports of “traditional” American vehicles are in any case tiny, and aren’t likely to explode in the short run – so, at first glance, she isn’t giving much ground away here. Indeed, there are very good reasons, much more significant than the tariffs, as to why American cars have traditionally not been that popular in the UK: historically they’ve been oversized, overchromed, under engineered and over here. The few imports that did arrive wearing their classic nameplates never won the reputation for durability that the German makes won, nor were they as reliable as all those Toyotas and Mazdas. Indeed, such factors, and not tariffs, lie behind the long term decline in their own home markets of the American “Big Three” – General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.

Yank tanks. Gas guzzlers. Gaudy gargoyles. They tried everything, including GM rebadging tiny Korean Daewoos as Chevrolets, launched without success on a bemused car-buying public. They dressed up a Saab as a Caddy, to no avail; and, after a brief fad inspired by their use by the US military in Iraq, the massive civilianised Humvees have also disappeared from British roads. Such cars just didn’t appeal to European tastes and were never understood. Not even the handsome Chrysler 300C, a large saloon inspired by the Rover P5 and partly based on Mercedes-Benz components, and which did enjoy sales success in the early 2000s, could build critical sales mass.

The most prominent American-brand cars on sale in Britain today trade heavily on their American heritage and glamour – the latest generation of the Ford Mustang, complete with lazy 5-litre V8 (Flat Rock, Michigan) and the famous Jeep Wrangler (Toledo, Ohio). Both are magnificent artefacts of American culture; neither is good for the planet or sells that well. And that’s about it for that kind of American automotive presence in Britain – and it wouldn’t change much under any tariff changes.

But that is not the end of the story. Because of globalisation much has changed in the American industry, and some of it invisibly. For example, a much more significant importer of American cars to Britain these days is…BMW, which brings in X5 SUVs, a common enough sight on our roads, from Spartanburg, North California. They have German-made engines and other bits, but they are “American” cars acceptable to European tastes. Or take the all-electric Ford Mustang Mach-E SUV (which doesn’t have much in common with the sports coupe). That’s assembled in Mexico, but, thanks to the free trade deals signed by Donald Trump, has components from the United States too.

Or, even more to the point, there’s the Tesla. It just so happens that all the many Tesla models sold in the UK, almost ubiquitous in some cases, are shipped in from China and Germany, but there’s no reason why these Muskmobiles couldn’t be sourced from his expanding operations in the USA. Aside from the Cybertruck, which apparently nobody wants, they’re not laughably big, and have zero CO2 tailpipe emissions. There are now obviously very different, politically-driven image reasons why sales of Musk’s “swasticars” have collapsed; but if Toyota bought out Tesla no one would object to these Yankmobiles.

With minimal tariffs on US imports, whatever their badging, British motorists could more choice and cheaper personal transportation than would otherwise be the case. The market would evolve, as it always does, and, in return, more UK-made products could win a following in the States – where car buyers are much more open-minded and less snobbish. On this at least, Reeves is steering in the right direction.