Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Tuesday 23 May 2017

Twenty-two people, including children, were killed by a
suicide bomber at Manchester Arena last night after a concert by US
singer Ariana Grande, who has a strong following among teenage
girls. Police say a lone male attacker detonated an improvised
device and is thought to have died. At least 59 victims were
injured in the blast.

Britain’s main political parties have all suspended
election campaigning today as a mark of respect for the victims of
last night’s Manchester Arena bombing, with the SNP putting off the
launch of its manifesto. Theresa May is chairing a meeting of the
Cobra emergency committee and Jeremy Corbyn said he was “horrified”
by the attack.

After Theresa May published a manifesto promising to
increase “unprecedented” government support for the oil and gas
industry, it has emerged that senior oil executives have given a
total of £390,000 to the party under her leadership. Three of them
have had dinner with May or a senior Tory minister since she took
office.

Donald Trump is today meeting Palestinian leader Mahmoud
Abbas in the West Bank, after meeting Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu. Palestinians have been protesting in the
streets against the visit after Trump eulogised the bonds between
the US and Israel. Trump called the Palestinian problem “one of the
toughest deals of all”.

NHS trusts in England overspent by a total of £770m last
year, £190m more than the maximum the government had hoped for.
They received £1.8bn of bail-out funding, without which the deficit
would have been around £2.5bn, which is more than the previous
year’s overspend of £2.45bn. The figures are from the Health
Service Journal.

US motorcycle champion Nicky Hayden has died at the age of
35, five days after he was hit by a car while training on his
bicycle in Italy. He suffered severe brain damage and other serious
injuries in the crash in Rimini on the Adriatic coast. The
30-year-old driver of the car which struck Hayden has been
questioned by the authorities.

The artist Jeremy Deller, a former Turner prize winner,
has been revealed as the creator of posters which have appeared
across London criticising Theresa May. Black text on a plain white
background reads: “Strong and stable my arse.” Deller, who once
re-enacted the Battle of Orgreave, says the posters are
self-explanatory.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, who has overseen a
wave of state-sanctioned murder since taking office and boasted of
killing drug addicts himself, is in Moscow today for a five-day
Russian trip on which he will meet Vladimir Putin. Duterte has
called Putin his “favourite hero”. Last year he called Barack Obama
a “son of a bitch”.

Japanese researchers have bred healthy mice using sperm
which had been frozen and then taken into space, proving that the
near-weightless conditions were no bar to reproduction. They
suggest that sperm banks could be created on the Moon in case of
disaster on Earth. In 1988 it was shown that sperm swim faster in
low gravity.