• It had called on Tesco to act after rivals including Waitrose, the Co-op, Marks & Spencer, Aldi, Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s agreed to pay more for British pork through their dedicated supply chains.
• “This is a very welcome boost for beleaguered pig farmers, who are currently facing unprecedented costs of production and need a tangible increase in the price they are being paid in order to stay in business.

• Sri Lanka’s new prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has warned that the financial crisis engulfing the country will get continue to get worse and “the next couple of months will be the most difficult ones of our lives”.
• In his first address to the country since he was appointed as interim prime minister on Thursday, after Mahinda Rajapaksa stepped down from the role amidst Sri Lanka’s worst economic crash since independence, Wickremesinghe was blunt as he described the conditions of the country’s finances as “extremely precarious”.

• The Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey, has blamed the war in Ukraine for the highest inflation in the UK for three decades and warned that “apocalyptic” food prices caused by Russia’s invasion could have a disastrous impact on the world’s poor.
• Giving evidence to MPs, Bailey said that while he was unhappy about the current level of price rises, 80% of the inflation overshoot was down to factors outside the Bank’s control.

• Asked about “the state of the country right now”, Trump said: “I think it’s sad to see what’s going on if you really look deep into it.
• Melania Trump has refused to rule out a second term as first lady, should her husband capture the White House again.

• Johnny Depp was hallucinating and his sobriety had completely collapsed in the final months of his marriage, his ex-wife – fellow actor Amber Heard – testified on Monday in the civil lawsuit between the two.
• At the beginning of her testimony on Monday, she corrected herself about the timing of the first time she said Depp slapped her, which revolved around her questioning him about one of his tattoos.

• “Many pregnant smokers find it difficult to quit with current stop smoking medications including nicotine patches and continue to smoke throughout pregnancy,” said Dr Francesca Pesola, an author of the new study who is based at Queen Mary University in London.
• Only a small number of participants provided saliva samples to confirm smoking abstinence at the end of pregnancy, but once those who used non-allocated products were excluded, the team found higher rates of abstinence among the e-cigarette group.

• All of the senior police managers giving evidence to a public inquiry have maintained they did not know that the undercover officers they were supervising had formed sexual relationships with women during their covert deployments.
• The inquiry, which is scrutinising the covert infiltration of political groups, has heard that the practice of undercover officers deceiving women into relationships was “endemic and common”.

• Callum Wheeler chased and ambushed Julia James, 53, with a 3kg metal railway jack as she walked her dog near her home in Snowdown, Kent, in April last year.
• Deputy chief constable Tim Smith said the case was “extremely poignant”, adding: “Many of our staff knew Julia intimately and as a friend.

• Digital investors have withdrawn savings in the “stablecoin” tether worth $7.6bn since the cryptocurrency crisis began last week, suggesting the company has paid out a sum almost twice its total cash holdings to spooked depositors.
• Tether, the third biggest cryptocurrency by “market cap”, experienced a short-lived crisis on Thursday when its value dropped from $1 to 95¢ as savers feared it would follow its fellow stablecoin terra and collapse.

• The New York congresswoman, who was swiftly installed to replace Cheney when House minority leader and Trump loyalist Kevin McCarthy orchestrated Cheney’s ouster last year, has used the great replacement theory to make false accusations that Democrats were plotting a “permanent election insurrection” by replacing white voters with immigrants.
• Cheney, who was removed from her position as the No 3 House Republican last year after she joined the panel investigating the 6 January Capitol attack, urged party leaders in a tweet to “renounce and reject these views and those who hold them”.

• Yes, the UK took a new approach in December, conceding a phased deal was more practical separating trade barrier issues from the trickier problem of the role of the European court of justice (ECJ).
• Chances appear strong for a deal on some SPS checks, ending controls on British sausages and chilled meats.

Tribunal finds Babis Anagnostopoulos culpable of premeditated murder and perverting course of justice

A Greek helicopter pilot who claimed he killed his British wife, Caroline Crouch, 20, in a fit of anger following a row that had “blurred” his senses, has been found guilty of murder at the end of a trial watched closely in Greece and abroad.

The seven-member mixed tribunal of judges and jurors concluded unanimously that Babis Anagnostopoulos was culpable of premeditated murder, and perverting the course of justice.

• Rooney said Vardy had told a “lot of lies” during the legal proceedings and insisted she only made the public accusation that Vardy was the leaker as a last resort to try to finally stop stories about her private life appearing in the the newspaper.
• Rooney told the high court she spent months posting fake Instagram stories and restricting their audience to just Vardy’s account, in an effort to work out who was passing stories on her private life to the tabloid newspaper.