Category Archives: UK news

UK business secretary denies free speech issue featured in US tariff talks

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Source reportedly says ‘no free trade without free speech’ after US bureau holds meeting with anti-abortion campaigner

The business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, has denied that the issue of free speech has featured in tariff negotiations with the US after reports a deal could be jeopardised by the outcome of a criminal case in Dorset.

The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), an office within the US Department of State, has met the anti-abortion campaigner Livia Tossici-Bolt, who was prosecuted for an alleged breach of a buffer zone outside a Bournemouth abortion clinic. The verdict is due on Friday following a trial at Poole magistrates court.

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Wild co-founders ‘land £100m’ from sale of natural deodorant maker

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Childhood friends sell upmarket brand to Unilever, the maker of Dove soap, Axe deodorant and Marmite

A pair of UK entrepreneurs selling refillable deodorant cases and manuka honey lip balms made from natural ingredients have reportedly landed a near-£100m payday from the sale of their brand to the global consumer goods group Unilever.

Wild, founded by childhood friends Freddy Ward and Charlie Bowes-Lyon, has been bought by Unilever, the maker of Dove soap, Axe deodorant and Marmite.

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Asylum system risks ‘damaging social cohesion’, Glasgow city council warns

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Council says cost running into tens of millions, as homeless refugees granted asylum across UK come to city for support

The asylum system risks “damaging social cohesion” with homeless refugees putting “unprecedented pressure” on Glasgow services, the city council has warned.

Glasgow city council, the largest asylum dispersal area outside London, had welcomed asylum seekers for decades, said the city convener for homelessness, Allan Casey.

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UK housebuilders ‘very bad’ at building houses, says wildlife charity CEO

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Land speculation to blame for lack of progress amid Labour drive to build 1.5m new homes, says Wildlife Trusts head

Housebuilders in the UK are failing to supply much-needed new homes not because of restrictive planning laws, but because they are “very bad” at building houses, the head of one of the UK’s biggest nature charities has warned.

“There’s planning permission today for a million new houses,” said Craig Bennett, chief executive of the Wildlife Trusts. “So why aren’t they being built? Why is it that volume housebuilders in this country are actually very bad at building houses, even when they’ve got planning permission?”

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Large majority of Europeans support retaliatory tariffs against US, poll finds

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Survey shows between 56% and 79% across seven countries in favour if Trump introduces ‘Liberation Day’ levies

A large majority of western Europeans support retaliatory tariffs against the US, a survey has suggested, if Donald Trump introduces sweeping import duties for major trading partners as expected this week.

The US president appears likely to unleash a range of tariffs, varying from country to country, on Wednesday, which he has called Liberation Day. He also said last week that a 25% levy on cars shipped to the US would come into force the next day.

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Chester zoo unveils £28m ‘Africa’ facility – complete with chilly giraffes

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Nine-hectare site home to 57 species including rhino, zebras and ostriches in UK’s biggest such development

“Although we are trying to replicate Uganda and Kenya we are actually in Cheshire so the weather is slightly different,” admits Chester zoo boss, Jamie Christon, on a fresh and very grey Monday morning.

But ignore the chilliness and screw your eyes and you could well be transported to a sweeping African savannah where, one day, there will be giraffes, zebras, antelopes and ostriches roaming majestically side by side.

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‘Woke’ criticism of Doctor Who proves show on right track, says its newest star

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Varada Sethu joining series as Doctor’s latest companion, marking first time Tardis team is wholly people of colour

Criticisms that Doctor Who has become too “woke” prove the series is doing the right thing by being inclusive, its new star Varada Sethu has said.

Sethu plays the Doctor’s latest travelling companion, Belinda Chandra, in new episodes airing next month. With Ncuti Gatwa returning as the Doctor, the pairing marks the first time a Tardis team will comprise solely people of colour.

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Search under way for girl, 11, who fell into Thames in east London

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‘Large-scale’ emergency response launched but later scaled down, while girl’s next of kin given support

A search is under way to find an 11-year-old girl after she fell into the River Thames in east London, police have said.

Metropolitan police officers were called to reports that the child had entered the river close to Bargehouse Causeway, near London City airport, at about 1.15pm on Monday. Emergency services launched a “large-scale response” to the incident, the force said, but the search was later scaled down.

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Epstein and Prince Andrew accuser says she has days to live after bus crash

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Virginia Giuffre writes on social media she has ‘gone into kidney renal failure … they’ve given me four days to live’

Virginia Giuffre, a victim of the disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein who once alleged she was sexually trafficked to Britain’s Prince Andrew, says she has just days to live after being involved in a vehicle accident.

“This year has been the worst start to a new year … I won’t bore anyone with the details, but I think it important to note that when a school bus driver comes at you driving 110km as we were slowing for a turn no matter what your car is made of it might as well be a tin can,” she wrote in a post on social media on Sunday, along with a photograph of herself lying in a hospital bed with a head injury.

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Tenants win £260,000 of rent back in legal fight with London ‘rogue landlord’

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Residents took firms owned by billionaire to tribunal for operating unlicensed houses in multiple occupation

Tenants of two buildings in east London have been awarded a six-figure sum in rent repayments by a tribunal after challenging a billionaire described by a judge as a “rogue landlord”.

The group of current and former residents of Olympic House and Simpson House in Hackney took companies owned by John Christodoulou to tribunal for operating unlicensed houses in multiple occupation (HMOs), which meant the buildings were not subject to the safety and quality standards required by law.

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Scotland Yard protesters demand justice for drag artist found dead in Soho in 2023

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Friends and fans of Heklina denounce Met’s investigation of unsolved death in her London flat

Nearly two years after the American drag artist Heklina was found dead in London, her friends and fans gathered outside Scotland Yard’s headquarters to protest against the force’s handling of the case.

Heklina, whose real name was Steven Grygelko, was found at a flat in Soho, central London, on 3 April 2023, by a friend and fellow drag performer, Peaches Christ, real name Joshua Grannell.

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Police offer £10,000 reward for information on boy who disappeared in London in 2008

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Alexander Sloley was a 16-year-old college student when he went missing from Islington

Police seeking information about a 33-year-old man who disappeared 17 years ago have offered a £10,000 reward.

Alexander Sloley was 16 and studying accountancy at college when he disappeared from Islington, north London, in August 2008. His family and friends have not heard from him since, despite issuing an efit of what he might look like in his late 20s when the police investigation was reopened in 2019.

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Trump ‘running out of patience’ with Putin over Ukraine ceasefire, says Finnish president

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Alexander Stubb – who played golf with Trump this weekend – suggested deadline and US sanctions package

Donald Trump is losing patience with Vladimir Putin’s stalling tactics over the Ukraine ceasefire, the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, said after spending several hours with the US president – including winning a golf competition with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Saturday.

Stubb, who also spent two days with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, last week in Helsinki suggested in a Guardian interview a plan for a deadline of 20 April, by which time Putin should be required to comply with a full ceasefire.

Stubb pointed out that a third golf partner on Saturday, the Republican senator Lindsey Graham, already has a bill in the US Senate proposing what he has described as “bone-breaking” US sanctions on Russia if it did not accept an unconditional ceasefire.

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Youth Demand says more protesters have signed up since Quaker house raid

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Group claims as many as 200 people have expressed interest in joining its action as arrests drive awareness

The activist group targeted in an unprecedented police raid on a Quaker meeting house said it had resulted in large numbers of people signing up to take part in a series of new protests starting this week.

Six women attending a gathering of the protest group Youth Demand were arrested after more than 20 uniformed police, some equipped with Tasers, forced their way into the Westminster meeting house on Thursday. The raid was condemned by the Quakers as “an aggressive violation”.

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Donors quit Prince Harry’s charity when he left UK, says Sentebale chair

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Sophie Chandauka claims there is ‘significant correlation’ with drop in funders and prince’s move to the US

Donors abandoned the charity Prince Harry founded in memory of his late mother when he left the UK, the chair of Sentebale has said amid a bitter media row in which she accused the prince of trying to “eject” her through “bullying” and “harassment”.

Sophie Chandauka told Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme that there was a “significant correlation” between a drop in funders and the Duke of Sussex’s departure to the US after the controversy caused by his rift with the royal family.

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Police officers ‘mocked and ostracised’ for paternity leave in England and Wales

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Exclusive: Most only take a week’s leave, and paternity pay for back-office staff in Met is nearly three times higher

Police officers have described being ostracised for taking paternity leave, as it is revealed that back-office staff in the Metropolitan police are entitled to proportionately nearly three times as much paternity pay as frontline fathers.

A freedom of information request has revealed that most serving police officers in England and Wales only take one week of paternity leave, with some describing being on “blue lights” duty and carrying Tasers a week after the birth of their babies.

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Man arrested over three deaths in fire at house near Kettering

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Four-year-old girl, young man and woman killed by blaze at former stationmaster’s house in Rushton

A 54-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after a fire at a historic former stationmaster’s house killed three people, including a four-year-old girl, police have said.

Emergency services were called at about 10.30pm on Friday to reports of a large blaze at a property in Beswick Close in Rushton, near Kettering.

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Shabana Mahmood plans bill to overrule Sentencing Council in ‘two-tier justice’ row

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Ministry of Justice drafts instruction for judges in England and Wales to ignore guidelines on age, sex and ethnicity

Ministers are planning to introduce a last-minute rule change this week to overturn sentencing guidelines that could have led to criminals getting different sentences depending on their age, sex and ethnicity.

Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, is planning to bring a bill to the Commons this week to overrule the guidelines, which are due to come into force in England and Wales on Tuesday.

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Anti-scam campaign groups urge UK police forces to get tougher on fraudsters

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Campaigners say scammers are claiming millions from victims in ‘a penalty-free crime’

Anti-scam campaign groups are calling for police forces to be much tougher on fraudsters, who they claim are scamming millions from victims in “a penalty-free crime”.

The pleas are being made just days after the UK government announced it is working on an “expanded” fraud strategy as part of a “robust response” to surging reported fraud rates, which rose by 19% last year according to the Office for National Statistics.

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Minister attacks expenses rules after Labour MP’s claim for ‘pet rent’

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Watchdog accepted Taiwo Owatemi’s claim for landlord’s surcharge to let her keep dog in London flat

Ministers will ask the Commons authorities to consider changing rules that allowed a Labour whip to claim £900 in expenses to rent a pet-friendly flat in London.

The government will lobby the independent expenses regulator to look at allowance rules after Taiwo Owatemi claimed for a pet surcharge demanded by her landlord to allow her to keep her dog in the property.

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