Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Boris Johnson appears to be fighting a losing battle to avoid Britain staying in the European Union beyond 31 October after Michel Barnier privately gave a scathing analysis of the prime minister’s new plan for the Irish border, describing it as a trap.
The European commission also refused to go into the secretive and intensive “tunnel” talks with the UK’s negotiators before a crunch summit on 17 October from which the UK had hoped to deliver a breakthrough deal.
Belfast prosecutors considering action against ‘Stakeknife’ and his British army handlers
A police inquiry into one of the biggest spy scandals in the history of British intelligence has recommended that more than 20 people including senior security force personnel and ex-IRA members be considered for prosecution, the Guardian has learned.
Operation Kenova, the multimillion-pound investigation into “Stakeknife” – the army agent at the heart of the IRA during the Northern Ireland Troubles – has now sent files identifying military commanders and at least one IRA veteran with a so-called “get-out-of-jail” card to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) in Belfast.
The absence of a “take it or leave it” demand in Boris Johnson’s conference speech has offered some hope in Brussels of a prime ministerial U-turn on what EU officials have described as unworkable proposals for the Irish border, my colleague Daniel Boffey reports.
The Mail on Sunday (MoS) published numerous embarrassing stories about Meghan in the run-up to her wedding to Prince Harry. Many of them required the cooperation of Meghan’s estranged father, Thomas Markle, who helped the newspaper produce numerous articles including staged paparazzi photos.
The absence of a “take it or leave it” demand in Boris Johnson’s conference speech has offered some hope in Brussels of a prime ministerial U-turn on what EU officials have described as unworkable proposals for the Irish border.
Downing Street had briefed before the address in Manchester that Johnson would use his platform to make a “final offer” to Brussels, but the rhetoric appeared in the end far more conciliatory than billed.
Boris Johnson agrees pact with Northern Irish party as details emerge of ‘two borders’ plan
Boris Johnson has struck a secret deal with the Democratic Unionist party involving radical proposals for a Belfast-Dublin “bilateral lock” on post-Brexit arrangements on the island of Ireland.
Details have emerged of the prime minister’s final Brexit offer that he will lay out on Wednesday, with Northern Ireland staying under EU single market regulations for agri-food and manufactured goods until at least 2025, at which point its assembly in Stormont will decide whether to continue alignment with EU or UK standards.
Prince compares wife’s treatment to Diana’s as proceedings over private letter are announced
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex has taken the unusual decision to sue the publisher of the Mail on Sunday after the newspaper published a handwritten letter she had sent to her estranged father.
The decision came as Prince Harry launched an extraordinary and highly personal attack on the British tabloid press and its treatment of his wife, saying he could no longer be a “silent witness to her private suffering”.
Exclusive: Whistleblower tells of links between Paola Cuneo, PM and US businesswoman
A Whitehall official who ran the scheme that granted Jennifer Arcuri a coveted entrepreneur visa had worked for Boris Johnson when he was mayor, the Guardian has learned.
The US businesswoman, who is at the centre of a conflict of interest row over her friendship with the prime minister, beat nearly 2,000 applicants to gain one of 200 sought-after tier 1 entrepreneur visas on the government’s Sirius programme after Johnson helped promote her firm, Innotech, by giving keynote speeches at her events.
One man sentenced to death and others receive long sentences in further blow to efforts to calm US-Iranian tensions
Iranian courts have sentenced one man to death for spying for the US and jailed two others for 10 years for the same crime, as well as imprisoning a fourth person for six years for spying for Britain, an Iranian judiciary spokesman has said.
“One person has been sentenced to death for spying for America … but the ruling has been appealed,” Gholamhossein Esmaili told the judiciary’s news website, Mizan, on Tuesday.
Boris Johnson’s hopes of entering into intensive negotiations next week over his Irish backstop plans are likely to be dashed if he continues to back the return of a customs border with checks and controls on the island of Ireland.
With just over two weeks to go before a crunch EU leaders’ summit at which Johnson hopes to sign off on a deal, Downing Street is banking on entering secretive “tunnel” negotiations to hammer out the details of an agreement.
Boris Johnson has denied the UK government was proposing to install customs clearance zones several miles away from the Irish border after Brexit to get around the controversial backstop arrangement.
The leaked plan, which appeared in the Irish media and has heightened concerns over a return to a hard border, was described as “not quite right” by the prime minister. But in a series of media interviews on Tuesday he would not explain what kind of Brexit plan he would be delivering to Brussels in the coming days, describing it only as “very good”.
Bank rules surveillance of outgoing head of wealth management Iqbal Khan was ‘wrong and disproportionate’
Credit Suisse has sacked its chief operating officer over an “extraordinary” James Bond-style corporate espionage scandal in which the bank hired private detectives to tail a senior executive and his wife through the streets of Zurich following a row with his boss at a cocktail party.
Switzerland’s second-biggest bank said on Tuesday that Pierre-Olivier Bouée had left with immediate effect after the board of directors ruled that the seven-day spying operation was “wrong and disproportionate and has resulted in severe reputational damage to the bank”.
Met Office says 78 flood warnings and 191 flood alerts in place on Tuesday morning
The Met Office has warned of torrential rain and thunder in parts of Britain.
Some regions are expected to receive the equivalent of two weeks’ worth of rain in less than an hour on Tuesday. There were 78 flood warnings and 191 flood alerts across the country by 7.30am.
UK media freedom envoy speaks out after targeted killing of Jamal Khashoggi
A “glaring gap” exists in the world’s ability to investigate targeted state killings of human rights defenders and journalists such as Jamal Khashoggi, said Amal Clooney, the UK special envoy on media freedom.
She also said the UN special rapporteur Agnès Callamard, who undertook the UN’s investigation into Khashoggi’s murder, “had been forced heroically to manage a large-scale investigation with ridiculously few resources”.
Inquest into death of six-year-old Dajahnel Young, who died during beach trip to Margate
The mother of a six-year-old girl who drowned at a seaside resort has said she told the woman looking after the child she did not want her daughter to go in the water.
Dajahnel Young, from Erith in south-east London, was seen lifeless in the sea off Margate, Kent, on 28 July last year, after being reported missing during a trip with friends from her local church.
Corporation director general Tony Hall emails staff to say he is overturning ruling over impartiality guidelines
The BBC has reversed its decision to discipline Breakfast presenter Naga Munchetty for breaking impartiality guidelines with her comments about the US president following enormous internal and external anger about the ruling.
The U-turn came after the Guardian published leaked internal correspondence casting doubts on the public claims made by senior BBC executives about the nature of the single viewer complaint that led to the ruling.
The Guardian’s just published a leader on Labour’s universal credit policy, concluding that the “plan makes sense”.
The shocking failings of universal credit are justly blamed on the government having listened to the wrong people when setting it up. The sensible reforms set out by Labour show that the opposition has been listening to the right ones. Never mind that the package of changes announced by Jeremy Corbyn on Saturday was misleadingly described as a plan to “scrap” universal credit. His party’s proposals to end the five-week wait for initial payments, scrap the benefit cap and two-child limit (and heinous “rape clause”) are sound. So are promises to review the sanctions system, ditch the “digital only” approach and hire 5,000 new advisers to help those who struggle with online applications.
The army’s zero-tolerance drugs policy has been scrapped less than a year after it was introduced, the defence secretary has confirmed.
Speaking at a ConservativeHome fringe event at the Conservative party conference in Manchester, Ben Wallace told Tory members he had changed the policy because it should be for commanding officers, and not the government, to decide to strip an individual of their job.
I changed it. I took the view that some people are young and irresponsible and it should be up to their commanding officers to decide, whether it’s a young lad or girl who’s made a mistake, whether they should be allowed to remain in the armed forces or not.
And people who have left and want to rejoin, the same should apply to them as well. I think, you know, that doesn’t mean to say you should be able to do drugs in the armed forces.
It should be up to commanding officers to understand their workforce, to understand whether that individual is the problem, or if there’s a medical problem and they think they need help, or whether indeed it was a mistake.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have received an apology from the paper after press regulator ruling
The Sun newspaper has apologised to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex after the press regulator ruled it had breached accuracy guidelines in an article about an alleged staff parking ban at their home.
In a front page story headlined “NOT IN MEG BACK YARD” published in April, the newspaper claimed Prince Harry and Meghan had upset staff by imposing a ban on “low-paid staff” using a car park near Frogmore Cottage in Windsor.
Ex-PM says she would like to write novel based on ill-fated 19th century ascent of Matterhorn
He was the British mountaineer who led the first ascent of one of the most formidable mountains in the Alps. She was the prime minister who is likely to go down in history for ultimately failing to reach the summit of her own personal Matterhorn.
Yet in her first public interview since leaving Downing Street – at a book festival in where she was asked about what book she might now find the time to write – Theresa May revealed that it was the dark rumours surrounding how four of Edward Whymper’s climbing party fell to their doom that most appealed to her.
Song Moujiang, jailed for people trafficking, escaped prison in 2002
Chinese police reportedly used drones to track down a convicted human trafficker who had been on the run for 17 years and was living in a cave.
Song Moujiang, 63, who was jailed for trafficking women and children, had evaded police capture after escaping a prison camp, Yilaochang Farm in Sichuan province, in March 2002, the BBC reported.