Category Archives: UK news

Marcus Rashford scores cover of British Vogue’s September issue

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The footballer is recognised for his activism in the magazine among 40 ‘faces of hope’

Marcus Rashford’s inspirational, policy-changing campaign against child poverty has garnered him accolades aplenty. Now it has also propelled the footballer on to the front cover of British Vogue’s September issue.

The Manchester United striker, who forced a government U-turn on the granting of free food vouchers for the poorest families over the summer, headlines a special edition dedicated to activism.

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Woman killed and put in wheelie bin by 16-year-old in Lancashire, court told

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Body of Lindsay Birbeck was moved to makeshift grave after she was killed in broad daylight, jury hears

A 16-year-old boy killed a teaching assistant in broad daylight, moved her body in a wheelie bin and buried her in a makeshift grave in Lancashire, a court has heard.

The body of Lindsay Birbeck, 47, was discovered by a passing dog walker in Accrington cemetery on 24 August 2019, the jury was told during the first day of a trial at Preston crown court on Monday.

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Liam Fox is the latest in a long line of victims duped by Russia’s GRU

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Over the past 20 years, the military intelligence agency has stolen information from targets around the world

Liam Fox, the former UK trade secretary, is merely the latest in a long line of victims apparently duped by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.

Over the past two decades GRU spies have stolen classified information from numerous targets around the world. According to Reuters, last summer they broke into Fox’s email account. They made off with secret US-UK trade documents later dumped out before the 2019 election.

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Man feared murdered is found alive in woods after nearly five years

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Ricardas Puisys found hiding in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, after Facebook account set up in his name

A man feared by police to have been murdered has been found living in woods, almost five years after he disappeared amid fears he was being exploited.

The last confirmed sighting of Ricardas Puisys, now 40, was on 26 September 2015 at his workplace, 20 miles from where he lived in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. He unexpectedly failed to return to work two days later and in November of that year police launched a murder investigation. The following month a man was arrested on suspicion of his murder before being released without charge.

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Russians ‘hacked Liam Fox’s emails’ to obtain dossier on US-UK trade talks

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Hackers reportedly accessed account last year and obtained dossier cited by Jeremy Corbyn during election campaign

Classified documents relating to US-UK trade talks are believed to have been hacked by Russians from an email account belonging to the former minister Liam Fox, it has emerged.

A report from Reuters said Russian hackers accessed Fox’s account several times between July and October last year and obtained a dossier that ultimately ended up in the hands of Jeremy Corbyn during the election campaign. The then Labour leader said the 451-page dossier showed the NHS “was on the table” in trade talks with the US.

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Manchester Covid outbreak ‘a warning to complacent white middle class’

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Exclusive: health chief says declaration of major incident shows spread not just in BAME groups

The declaration of a major incident in Greater Manchester should jolt a “complacent white middle class” into realising that Covid-19 is not just spreading in ethnic minority households, one of the region’s health chiefs has said.

Eleanor Roaf, the director of public health in Trafford, said 80% of its infections in the last week were in the white community, and she urged the region’s 2.8 million residents to concentrate “much harder on what we can do to stop the wider spread”.

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Coronavirus live news: world may never find ‘silver bullet’ Covid vaccine, says WHO

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Covid-19 survivors have higher rates of mental ill-health, study says; Belgium sees ICU admissions double; Singapore to use electronic tags to monitor some travellers

Here are the main headlines from our global coronavirus coverage so far on Monday:

About 1.5 million Italians - 2.5% of the population of Italy- may have already contracted coronavirus, nationwide antibody tests indicate, according to the Associated Press.

The figure, announced by health officials on Monday, is six times the number of confirmed cases in Italy’s official virus tally. The results — viewed with the country’s overall death toll of close to 35,000 —align with a 2.3% estimated mortality rate of the virus.

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London risks losing its aura as a ‘fun’ place to work, economist fears

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Capital could lose £178m in 2021 as companies decline to send all workers back to offices

Major cities such as London face more economic pain as some companies resist the government’s efforts to encourage workers back to their desks this week, economists have warned.

Pablo Shah, a senior economist at the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), fears that the capital could have lost its aura as a “fun” place to work, particularly in the digital and creative industries.

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NHS appeals for urgent plasma donations from Covid-19 survivors

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Blood plasma containing coronavirus antibodies may help patients in any second wave

People who have recovered from Covid-19 are being urged to donate their blood plasma as part of an urgent appeal to help the NHS treat those who fall ill during a potential second wave.

The call follows news that the number of appointments booked each week as part of the ongoing NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) convalescent plasma collection has dropped by almost half in the past month. There are fewer eligible donors due to the fall in new infections during lockdown.

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Tory MP arrested on rape charges ‘should have whip withdrawn’

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Labour calls for former minister accused of violent sexual assault to be removed from party

A former Conservative minister arrested on suspicion of rape should have the party whip removed immediately, the shadow domestic violence minister, Jess Phillips, has said.

The MP for Birmingham Yardley called for action on Sunday after a woman in her twenties accused the Tory MP of violent sexual assault and coercive control.

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Coronavirus global report: ‘response fatigue’ fears as Mexico hits 9,000 daily cases

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Many countries that believed they were past the worst are grappling with new outbreaks, says WHO

Mexico has recorded more than 9,000 daily coronavirus cases for the first time, as the country overtook the UK with the world’s third-highest number of deaths from the pandemic after the US and Brazil.

The surging numbers were reported as the World Health Organization warned of “response fatigue” and a resurgence of cases in several countries that have lifted lockdowns.

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Untold stories of Jewish resistance revealed in London Holocaust exhibition

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Diaries and manuscripts turn spotlight on little-known acts of endurance and bravery

From quiet acts of bravery, to overt acts of rebellion, Jewish resistance to the Holocaust took many forms, yet research shows they remain largely unacknowledged in traditional UK teachings about the genocide.

A new exhibition, drawing on thousands of previously unseen documents and manuscripts, is placing some of the little-known personal stories of heroism, active armed resistance, and rescue networks in the extermination camps and ghettos at the forefront.

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No 10 criticised over drive to recruit White House-style spokesperson

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Downing Street accused of flouting rules while FDA claims ministers will be forced to accept special advisers picked by PM

Downing Street is being accused by Labour of flouting Whitehall rules to hire a new White House-style spokesperson to host daily government press conferences on live TV.

A new special adviser is being recruited to reply to questions from journalists including rebuffing criticisms from opposition politicians.

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Coronavirus live news: Victoria declares state of disaster and nightly curfew for Melbourne

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Hundreds of ‘mystery cases’ have forced decision in Australian state; UK planning to avoid a second national lockdown; South Africa’s cases pass 500,000

Coronavirus infections in the Philippines surged past 100,000 Sunday in a troubling milestone after medical groups declared that the country was waging a losing battle against the virus and asked the president to reimpose a lockdown in the capital.

The Department of Health reported a record-high daily tally of 5,032, bringing the total confirmed cases in the country to 103,185, including more than 2,000 deaths, the Associated Press news agency reports.

In the UK, where police have broken up several large dance parties since the lockdown began earlier this year, a warning has been issued to people to stay away from an area in south-west England, where they have been forced to break up a rave attended by a “large volume” of partygoers.

Gloucestershire police sent out this tweet this morning:

Police are currently in the Forest of Dean near to Speculation Car Park dispersing a rave. People are advised not to attend the area due to safety and Covid risks. This will likely take some time to resolve this issue. pic.twitter.com/rtYrXSqWb3

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Rage against the dimming light: Irish rebel over lighthouse LED makeover

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Proposals to install low-energy devices in seven coastal beacons in the north and the republic have angered campaigners, who say the enchanting ‘loom’ of the beams will be lost

The “loom of the light” is a phenomenon that lets you see the glow of a lighthouse from over the horizon. Particles of water vapour in the atmosphere scatter the light upwards so it can be glimpsed further than the line of sight. It is an optical wonder that has delighted – and guided – mariners for centuries.

But now some fear an environmental push towards low energy will extinguish a loom that stretches across the Irish Sea, draining beauty from the nocturnal landscape.

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‘Coronavirus has stolen our future’: young people’s despair as jobs evaporate

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New graduates and school leavers across the UK have paid the price of lockdown, says survey

Young people across Britain believe their future has been “stolen” as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, with more than half fearing it has damaged their prospects.

Amid growing evidence that the pandemic is fuelling a generational divide, two thirds of 16- to 24-year-olds also said that their age group, loosely defined as ‘Generation Z’ will pay the economic price for a disease that has mostly affected older people, according to a survey by the Hope not Hate charitable trust, an anti-racism group.

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Expect more lockdowns until low-paid workers are able to isolate without fear of poverty

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Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham warns that dramatically shifting pictures of infection rates will continue to force local lockdowns

Last week we got a taste of things to come. As we head for winter without a Covid-19 vaccine, we will all need to get used to a new routine where, every Thursday, the latest round of local restrictions is announced. Greater Manchester was not the first and we certainly won’t be the last.

When the secretary of state for health called late on Thursday afternoon to inform me of his intentions, I was not surprised.

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Forest of Dean rave: police disperse ‘large volume’ of people at dance party

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Gloucestershire police say they have broken up an event in the forest and warned others to stay away

Police have warned people to stay away from the Forest of Dean, where they have been forced to break up a rave attended by a “large volume” of partygoers.

Gloucestershire police said in a tweet early on Sunday morning: “Police are currently in the Forest of Dean near to Speculation car park dispersing a rave. People are advised not to attend the area due to safety and Covid risks.”

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Britain might look to Germany to heal the north-south divide | Torsten Bell

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What happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall involved money, and lots of it

Before the government was forced into locking down British regions, it wanted to level them up, closing productivity gaps between north and south. That’s a valuable objective, reinforced by new research on UK regional inequality from academics appropriately spread across Sheffield, Birmingham and London. The paper reminds us that the UK has some of the biggest productivity gaps between regions in the developed world, with global leaders in parts of London and the south-east very different to some cities in the north and Midlands.

There’s nothing new in politicians or academics pointing to the north-south divide, but more interestingly the work notes that the UK has not always led the way in this inequality between places. Most countries had higher regional gaps than the UK for most of the 20th century. Indeed, the UK’s productivity gaps fell postwar and their surge is only a post-90s phenomenon.

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Public told to avoid four ‘unmanageable’ Kent beaches

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Crowds far exceed lifeguards’ capacity as coastguard records busiest day for four years

Holidaymakers in Kent have been asked to avoid four of the county’s beaches after fears some have become “unmanageable” due to the number of visitors.

The coastguard had its busiest day in more than four years on Friday – when the UK recorded its third hottest day on record – dealing with 329 incidents. Local authorities have expressed concern that there are not enough lifeguards as crowds swell.

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