World
Former head of Britain’s Post Office surrenders royal honor after hundreds of postmasters wrongfully accused
- The former head of Britain’s post office said she will return the Commander of the Order of the British Empire honor that she received in 2018.
- This comes in response to public outrage over the wrongful accusation of hundreds of postmasters due to a faulty computer system.
- The UK government is considering a mass amnesty for more than 700 branch managers convicted of theft or fraud from 1999 to 2015.
The former head of Britain’s state-owned Post Office said Tuesday she will hand back a royal honor in response to mounting fury over a miscarriage of justice that saw hundreds of postmasters wrongfully accused of theft because of a faulty computer system.
The British government is considering whether to offer a mass amnesty to more than 700 branch managers convicted of theft or fraud between 1999 and 2015, because Post Office computers wrongly showed that money was missing from their shops. The real culprit was a defective accounting system called Horizon, supplied by the Japanese technology firm Fujitsu.
Ex-Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells said she would relinquish the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire that she received in 2018. An online petition calling for her to be stripped of the honor has garnered more than 1.2 million supporters.
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“I have listened and I confirm that I return my CBE with immediate effect,” said Vennells, who led the Post Office between 2012 and 2019.
A Royal Mail Post Office is seen in London on Oct. 10, 2013. U.K. police have opened a fraud investigation into Britain’s Post Office over a miscarriage of justice that saw hundreds of postmasters wrongfully accused of stealing money, when a faulty computer system was to blame. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, File)
“I am truly sorry for the devastation caused to the sub-postmasters and their families, whose lives were torn apart by being wrongly accused and wrongly prosecuted as a result of the Horizon system,” she said.
Vennells added that she continues “to support and focus on co-operating with” a public inquiry into the scandal that has been underway since 2022.
Technically, Vennells retains the CBE title until it is revoked by the Honors Forfeiture Committee, a move Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said he would support.
The Post Office maintained for years that data from Horizon was reliable and accused branch managers of dishonesty. Many were financially ruined after being forced to pay large sums to the company, and some were sent to prison. Several killed themselves.
The long-simmering scandal stirred new outrage with the broadcast last week of a TV docudrama, “Mr. Bates vs the Post Office.” It charted a two-decade battle by branch manager Alan Bates, played by Toby Jones, to expose the truth and clear the wronged postal workers.
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“I’m glad she’s given it back,” said Jo Hamilton, who was wrongfully convicted in 2008 of stealing thousands of pounds from her village post office in southern England. “It’s a shame it took just a million people to cripple her conscience.”
After years of campaigning by victims and their lawyers, the Court of Appeal quashed 39 of the convictions in 2021. A judge said the Post Office “knew there were serious issues about the reliability” of Horizon and had committed “egregious” failures of investigation and disclosure.
A total of 93 of the postal workers have now had their convictions overturned, according to the Post Office, but many others have yet to be exonerated.
Police have opened a fraud investigation into the Post Office, but so far, no one from the company or from Fujitsu has been arrested or faced criminal charges.
World
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World
Greenland leaders push back on Trump’s calls for US control of the island: ‘We don’t want to be Americans’
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Greenland’s leadership is pushing back on President Donald Trump as he and his administration call for the U.S. to take control of the island. Several Trump administration officials have backed the president’s calls for a takeover of Greenland, with many citing national security reasons.
“We don’t want to be Americans, we don’t want to be Danes, we want to be Greenlanders,” Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and four party leaders said in a statement Friday night, according to The Associated Press. Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory and a longtime U.S. ally, has repeatedly rejected Trump’s statements about U.S. acquiring the island.
Greenland’s party leaders reiterated that the island’s “future must be decided by the Greenlandic people.”
“As Greenlandic party leaders, we would like to emphasize once again our wish that the United States’ contempt for our country ends,” the statement said.
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Greenland has rejected the Trump administration’s push to take over the Danish territory. (Thomas Traasdahl/Ritzau Scanpix / AFP via Getty Images; Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trump was asked about the push to acquire Greenland on Friday during a roundtable with oil executives. The president, who has maintained that Greenland is vital to U.S. security, said it was important for the country to make the move so it could beat its adversaries to the punch.
“We are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not,” Trump said Friday. “Because if we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland, and we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor.”
Trump hosted nearly two dozen oil executives at the White House on Friday to discuss investments in Venezuela after the historic capture of President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3.
“We don’t want to have Russia there,” Trump said of Venezuela on Friday when asked if the nation appears to be an ally to the U.S. “We don’t want to have China there. And, by the way, we don’t want Russia or China going to Greenland, which, if we don’t take Greenland, you can have Russia or China as your next-door neighbor. That’s not going to happen.”
Trump said the U.S. is in control of Venezuela after the capture and extradition of Maduro.
Nielsen has previously rejected comparisons between Greenland and Venezuela, saying that his island was looking to improve its relations with the U.S., according to Reuters.
A “Make America Go Away” baseball cap, distributed for free by Danish artist Jens Martin Skibsted, is arranged in Sisimiut, Greenland, on March 30, 2025. (Juliette Pavy/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Monday that Trump’s threats to annex Greenland could mean the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
“I also want to make it clear that if the U.S. chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops. Including our NATO and thus the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War,” Frederiksen told Danish broadcaster TV2.
That same day, Nielsen said in a statement posted on Facebook that Greenland was “not an object of superpower rhetoric.”
Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen stands next to Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen during a visit to the Danish Parliament in Copenhagen on April 28, 2025. (Liselotte Sabroe/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images)
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White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller doubled down on Trump’s remarks, telling CNN in an interview on Monday that Greenland “should be part of the United States.”
CNN anchor Jake Tapper pressed Miller about whether the Trump administration could rule out military action against the Arctic island.
“The United States is the power of NATO. For the United States to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests, obviously Greenland should be part of the United States,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
World
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