Category Archives: UK news

Home Office to rewrite controversial advice on trafficked Nigerian women

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Claim that victims could return to Africa ‘wealthy and held in high regard’ sparked outrage

The Home Office is to rewrite guidance on handling asylum claims for women trafficked into the UK from Nigeria after it emerged the advice claimed victims could return to the African country “wealthy from prostitution” and “held in high regard”.

The comments were found in an official policy and information note on the trafficking of women from Nigeria, which is used by Home Office decision-makers dealing with protection and human rights claims.

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Donald Trump threatens new tariffs on $4bn of EU products

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Whisky, cheese and olives among items that could be hit in row over aircraft subsidies

Donald Trump has threatened fresh tariffs on $4bn (£3,2bn) of European products including cheese, scotch whisky and olives, ratcheting up pressure on the EU in a long-running row over aircraft subsidies.

The US trade representative’s office released a list of 89 additional items – including olives, Italian and Dutch cheese, Scotch whisky, Irish whiskey, pasta, coffee and ham – that could face tariffs. These join products worth $21bn that were announced as potential targets for tariffs in April, which included roquefort cheese, wine, champagne, olive oil and seafood such as oysters. The latest list also includes a number of copper products and other metals.

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Adidas under fire for racist tweets after botched Arsenal launch

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Company automatically posted pictures of new shirts with offensive Twitter handles on back

Adidas UK has come under fire after a social media gambit backfired spectacularly, leading to the company tweeting out pictures of its shirts with racist and offensive slogans on the back.

The error came as Adidas launched a social media campaign, #DareToCreate, in conjunction with its release of the new Arsenal home kit.

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Angela Smith launches bid to commission report on no-deal Brexit risks

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Labour’s leader in House of Lords at head of cross-party effort to establish joint committee of MPs and peers

Labour’s leader in the House of Lords, Angela Smith, is spearheading a cross-party bid to force the government to set up a powerful new committee to report by September on the risks of a no-deal Brexit.

Both candidates in the race to be Britain’s next prime minister are saying they are prepared to take Britain out of the EU without a deal if they cannot secure concessions from Brussels.

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Northern’s Pacer trains to run into 2020 despite retirement pledge

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Rail firm privately backtracks on vow to MPs that fleet would be retired by end of year

Northern rail promised MPs last week its fleet of hated “buses-on-rails” would be retired by the end of the year, but it has emerged the firm had already privately warned the transport secretary it might have to keep some of them in service well into 2020.

Rob Warnes, the rail firm’s network planning director, told the all-party parliamentary group (AAPG) on rail in the north that all of its antiquated fleet of Pacers would be gone by the end of the year, according to Ian Mearns, the Labour MP who chairs the AAPG.

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Dubai’s ruler battles wife in UK court after she fled emirate

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British government alleged to have been lobbied for return of Princess Haya

A legal battle between two of the most prominent Middle Eastern royals has been launched in the London courts amid claims that the UK government has been lobbied over the case.

Princess Haya bint al-Hussein, daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan, and her husband, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, are understood to have parted. They are now engaged in a formal dispute in the high court. The case began after she fled Dubai and is due to resume later this month.

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Home Office withdraws ‘nonsensical’ limit on support for slavery victims

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‘Cliff-edge drop’ in support after 45 days to be replaced by system tailored to individual needs

The Home Office has withdrawn a “nonsensical” policy that cuts off all support to modern slavery survivors after six weeks and will instead introduce a system individually tailored to victims’ needs.

The existing policy – which under the Modern Slavery Act provides safe housing, counselling and financial support for up to 45 days to people in the UK who have been formally identified as victims of slavery or trafficking – was suspended in April by a high court judge, who ruled that it risked causing “irreparable harm to very vulnerable individuals”.

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Theresa May makes veiled attack on Boris Johnson’s Brexit policy

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PM says Britain must leave EU with ‘a good deal’ in apparent rebuke to ‘do or die’ comment

Theresa May has made a thinly veiled attack on Boris Johnson’s “do or die” approach to leaving the EU on 31 October, insisting that the right approach for Britain was to leave with a deal.

Attending her last EU summit in Brussels as prime minister on Sunday, May took aim at the approach of the Tory leadership frontrunner, who has taken an increasingly hardline approach in recent days.

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‘We’ve still got queues, but this year for water not wellies’

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Festival shuts down showers and offers extra shady areas, while sales of ice-cream soar

Long queues at taps and shower closures were seen across the Glastonbury site as the festival dealt with its hottest day as temperatures rose to 30C on Saturday.

Showers were closed across the site as a precautionary measure to preserve water as temperatures soared and the festival’s management coped with the demands of 200,000 people requiring drinking water in challenging conditions.

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Boris Johnson ‘might never enter No 10’ if MPs withdraw support

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Constitutional experts say new Tory leader could be blocked from becoming prime minister without a Commons majority

Boris Johnson could be stopped from becoming prime minister even if he is elected as the new Conservative leader, two of Britain’s leading constitutional experts have said.

With Tory MPs threatening to withdraw support for the party under his stewardship, Johnson is warned that he could be prevented from ever entering Downing Street should it become clear he cannot command a majority in the House of Commons.

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Opec weighs up the risks if Russia goes it alone on prices

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Vladimir Putin may relish his place at the table in Vienna but he will be tempted to cash in on rising prices

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) will meet this week in Vienna under a familiar pretext: to act as stewards of oil market stability. In practice, oil ministers from the world’s most powerful oil-producing nations will thrash out a deal to limit the amount of oil flowing into the global market and avoid an oil price collapse.

The latest pact is expected to extend a milestone deal first struck between Opec and a Russian-led alliance of nations outside the cartel in the wake of the oil price crash.

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How Brexit party won Euro elections on social media – simple, negative messages to older voters

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Analysis highlights key to success of Farage party and identifies dozens of pro-Brexit bot accounts

The Brexit party used simple messaging, an active social media presence and a “overwhelmingly negative” attack to win the online battle before the European elections, according to a new analysis of the campaign.

Nigel Farage’s party accounted for 51% of all shared content on Facebook and Twitter during the campaign, despite only producing 13% of the content. The analysis, by the 89up digital agency, said the “scale of their success went beyond what we were expecting”.

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UK records hottest day of year so far

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Temperature hits 30.8C in Surrey with London forecast to be hotter than Hawaii

Britain has recorded its hottest day of the year so far, with temperatures predicted to soar as high as 35C (95F) in London and southern England.

Shortly before midday on Saturday the Met Office said a temperature of 30.8C had been recorded in Charlwood, Surrey, and that it could approach the all-time record for June of 35.6C, reached in Southampton in 1976.

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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe ends Iran prison hunger strike

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Husband also ends strike outside Iranian embassy in London after wife takes food

The imprisoned British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has ended her hunger strike after 15 days.

Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, who had been holding his own hunger strike outside the Iranian embassy in London in solidarity, said on Saturday his wife had eaten some porridge and fruit.

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‘I worry they are trafficked’: is the UK’s first ‘legal’ red light zone working? | Julie Bindel

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Leeds’ managed zone for prostitution was meant to make life safer for women, but, amid a firestorm of opposition, who is benefiting from the radical approach?

During the day the Holbeck industrial zone looks pretty innocuous. Perched on the southern edge of Leeds city centre, it backs on to residential streets peppered with betting shops, newsagents and takeaways.

Yet at night this industrial zone becomes something very different. It transforms into the UK’s first designated red light zone where, between the hours of 8pm-6am, street prostitution operates openly with neither the women nor the sex buyers facing prosecution.

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G20: May asks Saudi prince for transparency in Khashoggi case

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Prime minister urges open legal process over murder and raises Yemen concerns

Theresa May has raised concerns about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the humanitarian cost of the conflict in Yemen during a face-to-face meeting with the Saudi crown prince at the G20 summit in Osaka.

The prime minister held a bilateral meeting with Mohammed bin Salman on Saturday at what will be May’s final global summit before she steps down in July.

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London Bridge attack: Victims’ families criticise authorities for clearing MI5 and police

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Relatives of eight people killed in terrorist attack said security services had fallen short

The families of the London Bridge victims criticised the authorities on Friday after a coroner cleared MI5 and police of failing to prevent the terror attack despite having the ringleader under investigation.

After more than seven weeks of harrowing evidence, the inquests into the deaths of the eight victims of the June 2017 attack came to an end with the conclusion that they had been unlawfully killed.

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UK must decide next step on Brexit, says France’s Europe minister

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Amélie de Montchalin says EU 27 countries are not putting pressure on Britain over Brexit

France’s minister for European affairs, Amélie de Montchalin, has said it is up to the UK to decide the next step on Brexit and no single European Union country was pressuring London, least of all France.

Asked to respond to a report that Boris Johnson, the Conservative leadership favourite, had called the French “turds” over Brexit, De Montchalin declined to comment, saying she was unfamiliar with the word.

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