Large fire breaks out at derelict building being turned into luxury housing development
A large fire has broken out at a derelict university building in Glasgow which is being turned into a luxury housing development.
Firefighters are on scene at the Jordanhill campus in the west of the city as smoke billowed from the former Strathclyde University building.
Continue reading...Christopher Guest More Jr left the country shortly after the murder of Brian Waters in 2003
One of Britain’s most wanted fugitives has been arrested in Malta over the brutal killing of a man at a remote Cheshire farmhouse after 16 years on the run.
Continue reading...Sally Challen was subjected to a false narrative by a criminal justice system that painted her as “a controlling and jealous lover who planned to kill her husband”, her son has said.
In doing so it failed to recognise the decades of abuse and coercive control she had suffered at his hands, David Challen writes in an article for today’s Observer that is heavily critical of how abused women continue to be viewed by the courts, a concern that women’s rights campaigners said they shared.
Continue reading...Couple say they will not be frightened into hiding their sexuality after the attack
A fifth arrest has been made in connection with the homophobic attack of a couple on a London bus.
Melania Geymonat and her girlfriend, Chris, had been travelling on a bus in north London, and say they were attacked after refusing to kiss each other on demand for a group of young men. The attack is being treated as a hate crime by the Metropolitan police.
Continue reading...Humanitarian assistance is too siloed, inefficient and expensive to achieve lasting impact for billions of people in need
It is just over three years since the “Grand Bargain” was struck.
It was signed by the world’s major donors and aid providers, promising structural reform and committed to getting more money directly through to local and national organisations. But the deal has seen little change. The system remains dominated by a familiar group of UN agencies and international NGOs. Progress is at a glacial pace.
Continue reading...Residents hope regeneration will continue long after funding runs out
“Change is happening.” You can’t miss the three-word slogan that is plastered over the bright green building hoardings near Hull’s Humber Street Gallery. It feels like an apt one too. Modern townhouses are being built in the area next to the city’s dockside, which is being sold as “Hull’s new modern and exciting regeneration development”. There are temporary gallery spaces, workshops and dance classes, and cheap artist studios are being built. It is the kind of arts-led regeneration that has come to urban areas like the Northern Quarter in Manchester, Williamsburg in Brooklyn and Chueca in Madrid.
But this is different. This is Hull. A place whose name alone supposedly conjures images of “unspecified post-industrial misery”, king of the so-called “Crap Towns” and the bete noire of property expert Kirstie Allsopp – who deemed Hull the UK’s worst place to live in 2005. But Humber Street is a sign of progress and a rebranded city: a place buoyed by successful, year-long City of Culture celebrations that happened in 2017. If Hull has its swagger back, there’s good reason.
Continue reading...Airport will be world’s first accredited for serving sustainably sourced fish
Heathrow is to become the world’s first airport accredited for serving sustainably sourced fish and seafood, as all its restaurants pledge to help tackle overfishing.
Outlets whose menus still include “red-rated” fish – deemed by the Marine Conservation Society to be the least sustainable – have pledged to remove them by June 2020. Fish in that category include wild atlantic salmon, bluefin tuna and king prawns from non-certified farms.
Continue reading...Children with food allergies are found to have higher levels of substance in processed foods
A ballooning diet of junk food might be one of the factors fuelling a rise in food allergies, researchers have suggested.
Experts say they have seen a rise in food allergies in western countries, including the UK. While true prevalence can be tricky to determine, data published by NHS Digital shows episodes of anaphylactic shock in England due to adverse food reactions rose steadily from 1,362 in 2011-12 to 1,922 in 2016-17.
Continue reading...Labour leader says ‘not yet’ to calls for people’s vote, urging Tories to call general election
Jeremy Corbyn has indicated he will not bow to party pressure and move immediately towards demanding a second referendum, after Labour narrowly beat the fledgling Brexit party in the Peterborough byelection.
Corbyn – arriving in the Cambridgeshire city after the party’s candidate Lisa Forbes won by 683 votes, leaving the Tories trailing in third position – called for the “squabbling contenders” within the Conservative party to give the public a general election.
Continue reading...Lesbian couple assaulted by group of young males blame rise of rightwing populism for growth in hate crime
The two women left needing hospital treatment after they were attacked on a bus in a homophobic assault have blamed a rise in rightwing populism for growing hate crime and called on people to stand up for each other.
Melania Geymonat, 28, and her girlfriend, Chris, 29, defiantly announced they would not be intimidated into hiding their sexuality, days after they said they were attacked by several young men when they refused to kiss upon demand.
Continue reading...Censorship comes after bans on Washington Post, NBC, HuffPost and Wikipedia
The Guardian’s website has been blocked in China, amid a crackdown by the country’s authorities on international news websites to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
The Chinese government has regularly restricted coverage of the incident, where the military turned on protesters in Beijing who were taking part in nationwide pro-democracy demonstrations.
Continue reading...Simon Jenkins (It’s past time to move on from endless war remembrance, 7 June) writes that “too much remembering is a dangerous business”; to which the only answer is: “Try the alternative.” All will agree that the sacrifice of those who fought to defeat the Nazis should be properly commemorated. Many will also agree that, within that context, the terrible price paid by the Russians in defeating Hitler has not been properly acknowledged.
But that is where the “remembering” comes in, and the “butcher’s bill”, as Churchill put it, should not be the only mark by which a nation’s contribution is judged.
Continue reading...Human rights group calls on England and Wales to ban police use of AFR in public spaces
Automated facial recognition poses one of the greatest threats to individual freedom and should be banned from use in public spaces, according to the director of the campaign group Liberty.
Martha Spurrier, a human rights lawyer, said the technology had such fundamental problems that, despite police enthusiasm for the equipment, its use on the streets should not be permitted.
Continue reading...Dollar slides after America only created 75,000 new jobs last month, weaker than the 175,000 expected
Earlier:
Let’s get some details on the weakest US jobs report in three months.
The government cut 15,000 jobs in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while private companies hired 90,000 people.
The unemployment rates for adult men (3.3 percent), adult women (3.2 percent), teenagers (12.7 percent), Whites (3.3 percent), Blacks (6.2 percent), Asians (2.5 percent), and Hispanics (4.2 percent) showed little or no change in May.
Continue reading...Central African Republic has the highest rate of boy grooms, followed by Nicaragua, Madagascar, Nauru and Honduras
One in 30 young men were married as children, according to the first UN analysis of child marriage rates among boys.
Around 115 million boys and men around the world were married before they turned 18, according to Unicef, which warned the issue is often overlooked.
Continue reading...Neurologist says ‘metricising our lives’ is counterproductive when it comes to sleep
Smartphone sleep-tracking apps are making people so anxious and obsessed about their sleep that they are developing insomnia, a leading neurologist has said.
Speaking at the Cheltenham science festival, Dr Guy Leschziner, a sleep disorder specialist and consultant at Guy’s hospital in London, said a growing preoccupation with getting enough sleep was backfiring.
Continue reading...With sketch writers banned from his press conference with Theresa May, I was forced to endure it on TV
Sometimes I worry I am more psychically connected to Tottenham Hotspur than is healthy. Having done my two events at the Hay festival, I went back to the friends I was staying with to watch the Champions League final. Only to find they didn’t have BT Sport and their internet connection was patchy at best. So I ended up viewing the game on my iPad with a screen that kept buffering and then freezing. Which of course was entirely appropriate, because buffering and freezing appeared to be Spurs’ main game plan. The biggest match in the club’s history, against a team playing well below its best, and Spurs also chose to have a complete off day. Even down to giving away a dodgy penalty inside the first minute. You can’t get more Spursy than that. It almost made me proud. Still, there was one upside. The two friends, Matthew and Terry, who ended up using my tickets kept me updated with photos throughout their trip, from their arrival in Toulouse to their eight-hour car journey to Madrid to their picnic on the beach on the way back. What struck me most was that they were both smiling in every shot. Something I would never have managed. I would have been sick with anxiety before the game and acutely depressed after it. There was no avoiding it. The right two people went to the game. Though it was a little upsetting to realise all my friends almost certainly have a better time without me.
Continue reading...Labour’s Lisa Forbes says result shows ‘the politics of division will never win’
Labour has held on to the marginal seat of Peterborough, overturning predictions that the contest could deliver a first byelection victory for Nigel Farage’s Brexit party.
The victorious Labour candidate, Lisa Forbes, told her supporters after the count early on Friday: “Tonight’s result is significant because it shows that the politics of division will never win.”
Continue reading...People evicted from former British colony hope new documentary Another Paradise will reinforce UN calls for withdrawal
The Chagos Islanders have had few victories in their long battle to return from British-enforced exile to their archipelago homeland in the Indian Ocean.
But small steps keep their campaign alive and it is hoped a documentary that will premiere on Saturday will exert pressure on the UK government to change its stance.
Continue reading...GCHQ technical director says he hasn’t seen anything that reassures him company is taking necessary security steps
China’s Huawei Technologies needs to raise its “shoddy” security standards which fall below rivals, a senior British cyber security official said on Thursday, as the company came under increasing pressure internationally.
The US has led allegations that Huawei’s equipment can be used by Beijing for espionage operations, with Washington urging allies to bar the company from 5G networks.
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