French utility company EDF says operations in Somerset will start a year later as delay costs firm €2.5bn
Britain’s first new nuclear plant in a generation at the Hinkley Point C site will face further delay, at a cost of €2.5bn to the French utility company EDF.
EDF said the first reactor at the site in Somerset will begin operations in 2030, a year later than planned – almost 13 years after construction work began – after a series of delays to the project.
Continue reading...Guardian review of US justice department files reveals Epstein interacted with six CBP officers. Plus, how anxiety over AI could fuel a new workers’ movement
Good morning.
Federal investigators examined Jeffrey Epstein’s relationship with a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer who worked at the St Thomas airport to which the late convicted sex offender flew regularly by private plane before traveling by boat or helicopter to his private island, newly released documents reveal.
Was anyone ever charged? No CBP officer was ever charged for crimes related to Epstein, and the Guardian has not seen any evidence to suggest that CBP officers had direct knowledge or involvement in Epstein’s crimes.
How have Epstein’s survivors reacted? One of them, Marijke Chartouni, said: “If only the US justice department acted as decisively. It took British police less than three weeks from the release of the latest tranche of Epstein files to arrest Andrew, making Pam Bondi and Kash Patel look increasingly inept.”
Continue reading...Gloria Allred says allegations involving sharing of state trade secrets were prioritised over sexual assault claims against trade envoy
A lawyer representing several victims of Jeffrey Epstein has said she does not believe there will be “any real justice” for those trafficked and abused by him and his high-profile associates, despite the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
Gloria Allred, who has worked as a women’s rights lawyer for five decades, said that while the UK had acted quickly on the allegation that the former prince had shared confidential documents with the disgraced financier while he was a trade envoy, there appeared to be far less progress on sexual assault allegations against him.
Continue reading...Agreement across continent that Mountbatten-Windsor’s detention has put monarchy in unprecedented danger
Neither the shock nor the historical significance of the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was lost on the European press. And if there was one thing that correspondents and leader writers around the continent could agree on, it was that the former prince’s detention had plunged the British monarchy into a place of unprecedented danger and vulnerability.
“Despite all the scandals that have shaken the British royal family over the decades, it’s no exaggeration to say that the arrest of King Charles III’s brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor represents a momentous watershed for the Windsor monarchy,” El País said in a leader on Friday.
Continue reading...City of Catania calls ruse to avoid CCTV cameras installed to stop fly-tipping ‘as cunning as it is doubly wrong’
A man in Catania, Sicily, trained his dog to dump bags of rubbish by the roadside in an attempt to evade surveillance cameras installed to combat fly-tipping, municipal police have said.
The episode was detailed in a post on the city of Catania’s official Facebook page. Accompanying a video of the dog was a remark from the police that “inventiveness can never become an alibi for incivility”.
Continue reading...January increase of 1.8% beats forecasts and was also driven by shoppers snapping up jewellery online
Retail sales in Great Britain rose 1.8% in January, the largest monthly increase in almost two years, according to official data, as heavy discounting and post-Christmas sales drew consumers back to bigger ticket purchases.
The rise easily beat forecasts of a 0.2% rise and was partly driven by sales of artwork and antiques sales in January, alongside continued strong sales from online jewellers, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. It was the biggest monthly rise since May 2024.
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