Category Archives: UK news

London fire chief Dany Cotton resigns after Grenfell criticism

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Commissioner brings forward her retirement and will step down on New Year’s Eve

The London fire commissioner in charge of the highly criticised response to the Grenfell Tower fire has resigned following renewed calls from bereaved families and survivors of the disaster for her to quit.

Dany Cotton announced on Friday that she would be stepping down on New Year’s Eve, bringing forward her planned retirement in June. In October, after the public inquiry into what happened on the night of the fire found serious failings in the London fire brigade’s (LFB) preparation and response, Cotton refused to resign, saying she wanted to see out reforms. The inquiry concluded that the LFB’s delay in evacuating the burning building cost lives. The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, also resisted calls for her to go.

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Doctors in Spain revive British woman after six-hour cardiac arrest

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Audrey Mash developed severe hypothermia while hiking in Catalan Pyrenees in freezing weather

Doctors in Barcelona have managed to revive a British woman who had a six-hour cardiac arrest after developing hypothermia while hiking in the Catalan Pyrenees in freezing weather last month.

Audrey Mash said she was surprised at the attention her case had attracted and said it had not put her off hiking. “I feel like a fraud for not being back at work. I’m hoping to go back before the end of next week,” she said on Thursday.

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Boris Johnson vows to ban all-out strikes on public transport

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PM says sorry for describing Muslim women in veils as ‘letterboxes’ and promises EU trade deal by end of 2020

Boris Johnson has claimed that all-out strikes on public transport will be made illegal under a new Conservative administration following major disruption on UK train routes.

On a day when the prime minister also apologised “for any offence caused” by his comments about Muslim women and refused to concede it could take more than a year to agree a trade deal with the EU, he said it was “absurd” that rail workers could bring the system to a halt.

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Brexit is one of most spectacular mistakes in EU history, says Tusk

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Exclusive: Donald Tusk says it would still be better for both sides if UK stayed in EU

Brexit has been “one of the most spectacular mistakes” in the history of the EU and followed a campaign marked by “an unprecedented readiness to lie”, Donald Tusk has said.

In his first interview since standing down as European council president last week, Tusk said Brexit was “the most painful and saddest experience” of his five years in office, a tumultuous period marked by the Greek eurozone crisis, bitter rows over migration and the election of Donald Trump.

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No lookouts when train hit track workers in Wales, says RAIB report

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Pair ‘almost certainly wearing ear defenders’ and were not aware of train until too late

There were no formal lookouts when two experienced rail workers were hit and killed on a train mainline, a report has found.

Gareth Delbridge, 64, and Michael “Spike” Lewis, 58, were struck on the south Wales mainline by a Swansea to London train on 3 July.

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Abused girl passed around ‘like a piece of meat’, jury told

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Woman says she thought of taking her life after being raped and forced to perform sex acts as a child

A woman who alleges she was traded to men and sexually abused from the age of 12 repeatedly thought about taking her own life and claimed teachers did not intervene when rumours about her went around her school, a jury has heard.

The woman alleges she was forced to perform sex acts, raped , and urinated on by one of the alleged attackers.

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How does Nato look at the age of 70? It’s complicated

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Squabbling, a spreading focus and Trump raise doubts about the effectiveness of the alliance

Seventy years after Nato was founded to protect western Europe from Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, the military alliance returned this week to its first home in London to discuss an increasingly sprawling set of goals while bickering leaders competed to see who could offer the most contentious soundbite.

Normally this is an arena that would be dominated by Donald Trump, although this time he was somewhat upstaged by Emmanuel Macron, whose pre-summit declaration that the organisation had become “brain dead” obliged Trump to describe his French counterpart’s comments as “very, very nasty”.

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Boris Johnson suggests Huawei role in 5G might harm UK security

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PM signals he is preparing to shut Chinese firm out after lobbying from Donald Trump

Boris Johnson has cast doubt on whether the UK will allow Huawei to invest in its 5G network, suggesting it might “prejudice” the Five Eyes intelligence relationship, after Donald Trump applied pressure for other countries to adopt the US ban.

In his strongest signal so far that he is preparing to shut Huawei out of the network, Johnson said that security concerns were paramount in the decision about the Chinese company.

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Photos contradict Trump’s claim not to know Prince Andrew

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US president’s statement easily disproved as prince faces pressure to give evidence in US

Donald Trump has falsely claimed not to know the Duke of York as pressure rises on the latter to submit to questioning in America over his links to the sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein.

The US president was asked during an event at the US ambassador’s residence in London on Tuesday about the Queen’s son having stepped down from royal duties after his disastrous BBC interview about the allegations. “I don’t know Prince Andrew, but that’s a tough story, it’s a very tough story,” he answered.

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Macron clashes with both Erdoğan and Trump at Nato summit

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French president is rebuked by Trump over Nato criticism after row with Turkey about Kurds

Nato disunity was on full display on the opening day of the alliance’s summit in London as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, accused Turkey of colluding with Islamic State proxies while Donald Trump described Macron’s criticisms of Nato’s “brain death” as insulting and “very, very nasty”.

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for his part threatened again to veto Nato’s defence plan for the Baltics unless Nato endorsed its own assessment that Syrian Kurdish fighters on Turkey’s borders were terrorists, a definition that Macron and the Pentagon rejected.

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Data shows 90% of EU settlement scheme appeals successful

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FoI reveals Home Office details on applications of EU citizens to stay in UK post-Brexit

Nine in 10 appeals brought by EU citizens who have challenged Home Office decisions about their right to stay in the UK post-Brexit have been successful, new data has revealed.

The Public Law Project (PLP), which obtained the figures, said the findings raised “a number of red flags” for EU citizens “seeking to make the UK their home”.

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Corbyn apologises for antisemitism in Labour party

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Labour leader says: ‘Obviously I’m very sorry for what has happened’

Jeremy Corbyn has apologised to the Jewish community for antisemitic incidents involving Labour party members and said he was dealing with the issue.

The Labour leader said: “Obviously I’m very sorry for what has happened,” after being asked to apologise directly by presenter Philip Schofield, in an interview on ITV’s This Morning.

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Trump blasts Macron over ‘brain dead’ Nato remarks

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US president calls French leader’s comments ‘nasty’ and says Paris could leave alliance

Donald Trump has lashed out at Emmanuel Macron on the first morning of a two-day Nato meeting, saying the French president’s description of Nato as brain dead was insulting and a “very, very nasty statement”.

At a news conference alongside the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, the US president also accused Macron of trying to break away from Nato, as well as running a failing economy – while discarding the fact he himself has described Nato as obsolete on previous occasions.

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Academic quits C of E body over chief rabbi’s Labour antisemitism comments

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Gus John lambasts Justin Welby’s support amid church’s ‘woeful’ record on racism

A leading campaigner against racism has resigned from a Church of England advisory body in protest at the archbishop of Canterbury’s support for the chief rabbi’s comments last week on antisemitism in the Labour party.

Gus John, a respected author and academic, said: “As a matter of principle, I cannot continue to work with the Anglican church … after the archbishop of Canterbury’s disgraceful endorsement of the chief rabbi’s unjust condemnation of Jeremy Corbyn and the entire Labour party.”

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London Bridge attack: girlfriend praises ‘phenomenal’ Jack Merritt

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Prisoner course coordinator opened doors for marginalised in society, says Leanne O’Brien

The girlfriend of Jack Merritt, killed in the London Bridge terror attack, has paid an emotional tribute to the “phenomenal” Cambridge graduate.

Leanne O’Brien, who was comforted by family members as she wept during a vigil for Merritt in Cambridge on Monday, said her boyfriend had “opened so many doors for those that society turned their backs on”.

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Trump denies interest in NHS even if it was handed to US ‘on a silver platter’ – video

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Donald Trump has said he would not be interested in putting Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) on the table during trade talks with the UK even if it was ‘handed on a silver platter’.

Trump, who is in London for a Nato summit, said: ‘We have absolutely nothing to do with [the NHS], and we wouldn’t want to. If you handed it to us on a silver platter, we’d want nothing to do with it’

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Essex man arrested after boy, 12, dies in hit-and-run near school

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Male, 51, held on suspicion of murder and six counts of attempted murder

Police investigating the death of a 12-year-old boy who was hit by a car outside a school in a suspected hit and run on Monday have arrested a 51-year-old man on suspicion of murder.

Four teenagers and a woman in her 50s were also hurt during the incident in Loughton, in Essex, though their injuries were not thought to be life-threatening.

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Leaked NHS papers ‘put online by posters using Russian methods’

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Questions about dissemination of documents do not mean they are fake, but poses new puzzle

Leaked documents said by Labour to prove that the NHS was “on the table” in trade talks with the US were initially disseminated online by anonymous posters operating in a way similar to a Russian information operation known as Secondary Infektion, according to a social media research firm.

A 19-page report published on Monday by the consultancy Graphika said that while it could not conclusively prove a Russian origin to the leak, the early distribution of the cache of files via Reddit, three German-language websites and an anonymous Twitter account reflected a method of operation seen repeatedly over recent years.

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Half of all homeless people may have had traumatic brain injury

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Experts say TBI could be consequence or cause of homelessness

Half of all homeless people may have suffered a traumatic brain injury at some point in their life, according to new research – which experts say could be either a consequence or even the cause of their homelessness.

Traumatic brain injury is sudden damage caused by a blow or jolt to the head, which can be caused by a motor accident, a fall or an assault. Sometimes it can cause long-term damage to the brain, leading to neurological and psychiatric disorders.

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