Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Other species identified by Kew experts include a snowdrop and cancer-fighting fungus
A snowdrop discovered on Facebook, a miracle berry that tricks your tastebuds and a rubbery shrub that oozes its own superglue are among new plant species that were discovered in 2019.
Others identified by experts at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, include a ylang-ylang tree of which just seven individuals are known to exist, a new candy-striped violet and a fungus with pink fruiting bodies that can fight cancer and viruses.
Here’s a host more middle and junior-ranking ministerial appointments just announced by No 10:
A mooted plan to merge the department for international development (DfID) and the foreign office (FCO) risks allowing British aid money to be spent on “UK foreign policy, commercial and political objectives”, rather than on helping the world’s poorest people, more than 100 charities warn.
Merging DfID with the FCO would risk dismantling the UK’s leadership on international development and humanitarian aid. It suggests we are turning our backs on the world’s poorest people, as well as some of the greatest global challenges of our time: extreme poverty, climate change and conflict. UK aid risks becoming a vehicle for UK foreign policy, commercial and political objectives, when it first and foremost should be invested to alleviate poverty.
By far the best way to ensure that aid continues to deliver for those who need it the most is by retaining DfID as a separate Whitehall department, with a secretary of state for international development, and by pledging to keep both independent aid scrutiny bodies: the Independent Commission for Aid Impact and the International Development Select Committee.
Matthew Feargrieve convicted of assault on Ulrich Engler at Royal Opera House
A lawyer has been convicted of assaulting a fashion designer during a dispute over a front-row seat at an opera performance.
Matthew Feargrieve was found guilty in London of punching Ulrich Engler at least once while attending a performance of Wagner at the Royal Opera House on 7 October last year.
Allegations a security firm at Ecuadorian embassy gave footage to CIA come as 100 doctors urge Australia to protect him
Julian Assange’s fight against extradition to the US could last years, and his argument could hinge on reports he has been illegally spied upon and his sensitive information given to the CIA.
Meanwhile, more than 100 doctors from across the world have written to the Australian government, urging it to act and “protect the life of its citizen”, in a letter to be delivered to the foreign affairs minister on Tuesday, amid warnings Assange’s health continues to deteriorate.
PM intends to set plans for Brexit bill, carry out minor cabinet reshuffle and present Queen’s speech before Christmas
Boris Johnson will tell the next generation of more than 100 new Tory MPs that they have a responsibility to change the the party for good, as he sets out plans for a first vote on his Brexit bill before the festive season.
With just a week until Christmas, the UK prime minister intends to accelerate plans for his Brexit bill, carry out a minor cabinet reshuffle and present a Queen’s speech, before shifting his focus to reshaping Whitehall in the new year.
European Space Agency asks for help from Nasa with ExoMars project as trials fail and cost rises to €1bn
Space engineers are racing against time to fix major faults in the robot probe they plan to send to Mars next year. The complex parachute system that should slow ExoMars – Europe’s largest ever planetary mission – as it plunges into the Martian atmosphere failed catastrophically during recent tests.
As a result, the European Space Agency has called for emergency help from Nasa space engineers to help them save their stricken mission. New parachutes are now being tested at the US Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and will be subject to high-altitude trials in two or three months.
Matthew Gibbard was killed and his son Estefan injured in Argentina after being targeted by robbers
A British tourist was killed and his son seriously wounded when they were shot outside a luxury hotel in Buenos Aires during a robbery.
Matthew Gibbard, aged 50 and his son Estefan, 28, were targeted on Saturday by robbers on a motorcycle, supported by accomplices in a car, according to local reports.
Union says board agreed to salary increase after threat to escalate industrial action
Park attendants at seven central London green spaces will now be paid the London living wage after a wave of coordinated strikes.
Their union, United Voices of the World (UVW), said the board of Royal Parks – a charity which manages Hyde Park and St James’s Park, among others – agreed to increase workers’ salaries after it threatened to escalate industrial action on Thursday.
Move is being considered by EU officials in face of Johnson not seeking extension beyond 11 months
EU leaders would take the initiative and request an extension to the transition period, keeping the UK under Brussels regulations beyond 2020, under a plan mooted for getting around Boris Johnson’s stated refusal to seek a delay.
The move is being considered by EU officials as a way out of the problem posed by the short time available to negotiate a new relationship and the prime minister’s insistence that he will not seek an extension beyond 11 months.
Labour said to have ‘dug its own grave’ with Corbyn as leader as social change mantra failed to cut through
“I feel excellent,” said David Cliffe as he strode across Peterborough’s Cathedral Square, having contributed to a thumping Conservative majority. “I didn’t want to have a communist regime,” said the 71-year-old retired warehouseman. “The country would have been on its knees.”
Cliffe, who was on his way to book his mother a Christmas holiday in Scarborough, could not stop beaming about Boris Johnson’s Conservative landslide, which he reckoned meant Brexit was all but done.
Man, 48, held on suspicion of hate crime after passenger targeted in Stamford Hill
A man has been arrested by police investigating a hate crime attack after a bus passenger was subjected to antisemitic abuse.
The 36-year-old victim was reading a prayer book while travelling on the 254 bus towards Aldgate on 6 December when another man boarded near Stamford Hill in Hackney, north-east London.
Emmanuel Macron has warned Boris Johnson that the UK must remain “loyal” to EU standards post-Brexit for British companies to maintain access to the European market.
In comments echoed by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the French president demanded continued regulatory harmonisation as the price for protecting the flow of trade, a demand that will be a cause of concern for the Conservative government.
Defence team say he is unaware of some evidence in his case because of blockage in visits
Julian Assange has been blocked from seeing evidence in his extradition case because his lawyers cannot get sufficient access to him, a court has heard.
The WikiLeaks founder, 48, appeared at Westminster magistrates court by video link on Friday for a hearing to extend his detention in Belmarsh prison, in south-east London.
We will leave the EU in a few weeks. But it’s far from clear what kind of relationship with the bloc an emboldened PM will seek
Well it is truly remarkable. Not so much the result of the election, which is surprising enough. But, rather, the fact that following the “Brexit election”, one in which traditional party loyalties seem to have been stretched to breaking point by the leave-remain divide, we emerge not knowing what kind of Brexit the prime minister intends to deliver.
In the short term, there is now no doubt that he will be able to “get Brexit done” in the sense of taking the UK out of the EU by the end of January. And no, that does not mean that Brexit will, in fact, be done (on which more in a minute) in a practical sense. But it may – may – be possible for the government to give the impression that it is in a politically persuasive way.
Usman Khan killed two people in the attack last month after his release from prison
An investigation into Staffordshire police has been launched following the London Bridge attack last month in which a terrorist killed two people before being shot dead.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has begun an investigation into the force’s role in the management of the attacker, Usman Khan, following his release from prison last year after serving a term for terrorism offences.
Most EU nationals living in the UK cannot vote – leaving many feeling like pawns in a political game
In a threadbare youth centre in Bradford, Vie Clerc, who got off a Eurostar from Paris 19 years ago with £50 in her pocket and never left, laments the irony. “It’s the first one I’ll actually be able to vote in,” she said. “Shame I’ve never felt less British.”
In a bright mezzanine office in Bristol, Denny Pencheva, who landed in 2013 from Bulgaria via Copenhagen and now teaches at the university, bemoans politicians “who use us to score their political points, but don’t actually have to consider us – because politically, we don’t count”.
Eight passengers injured and a 63-year-old man arrested after part of vehicle’s roof sliced off
A double-decker bus carrying Christmas shoppers, commuters and students has crashed into a railway bridge, slicing part of the roof off and injuring eight passengers.
The bus, thought to contain more than 30 passengers, hit the low bridge at 10.15am in Swansea, south Wales. The top deck was crumpled and a section of the roof appeared to have been thrown on to the railway line above the bridge.
Greenpeace activists unfurl climate emergency banner on Brussels venue before event
European leaders meeting at a summit in Brussels will make a new attempt to set the European Union on course for carbon neutrality by 2050, in a test of the bloc’s credibility on the climate emergency.
Hours before EU leaders were due to arrive on Thursday, Greenpeace activists unfurled a banner on the side of the summit venue warning of the climate emergency.
Paramilitary forces deployed at demonstrations in north-east over bill excluding Muslims
Indian police have fired blanks on protesters as thousands ignored a curfew in the north-east of the country in fresh demonstrations against contentious new citizenship legislation.
Officials said on Thursday about 20 to 30 people have been hurt in the protests in recent days, with vehicles torched and police firing teargas and charging the crowds with heavy wooden sticks.