Category Archives: UK news

‘Monster’ neighbour jailed for at least 37 years for Gloucestershire murder

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Can Arslan stabbed Matthew Boorman to death on lawn and seriously injured two others

A “monster” who murdered one neighbour and seriously wounded two others in a “spree of planned violence” after they took legal action to try to curtail his 12-year campaign of extreme harassment has been jailed for at least 37 years.

Can Arslan, 52, stabbed Matthew Boorman on Boorman’s front lawn in the village of Walton Cardiff, Gloucestershire, on 5 October last year. Boorman’s wife, Sarah, sustained a knife wound to her thigh as she tried to help, while another neighbour, Peter Marsden, was stabbed eight times but managed to fend off Arslan.

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Britons sentenced to death after ‘show trial’ in Russian-occupied Ukraine

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Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner were captured while fighting in Ukrainian army

Pro-Russia officials have sentenced to death two British men and a Moroccan national captured while fighting in the Ukrainian army in Mariupol.

A court in Russian-controlled east Ukraine convicted Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner after a days-long process that observers have called a “disgusting Soviet era show trial” meant to imitate war crimes trials against Russian soldiers in Kyiv.

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Boris Johnson promises action on cost of living crisis but says higher wages risk further inflation – as it happened

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This live blog has now closed, you can read more on Boris Johnson’s comments about a potential ‘wage-price spiral’ here

The Queen has received a present from the cabinet to mark her Platinum Jubilee, No 10 says. It is a specially-commissioned musical box, with pictures of all the 14 prime ministers who have served here around the side. When it opens it plays Handel’s Hallelujah.

In every office there is always someone who organises the presents and this picture, on the No 10 Flickr account, suggests that in cabinet that job falls to Michael Ellis, the paymaster general.

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Dom Phillips: sister of missing journalist still hopeful he will be found

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Sian Phillips joins London vigil for Briton and the Brazilian Bruno Araújo Pereira who have vanished in Amazon

The sister of a British journalist missing in the Amazon has said she still has hope he will be found.

Sian Phillips was joined by supporters at a vigil for her brother Dom Phillips, who has worked as a freelance correspondent for the Guardian, and the Brazilian Indigenous affairs official Bruno Araujo Pereira outside the Brazilian embassy in central London on Thursday.

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Power firms must ‘up their game’ after Storm Arwen failures, says Ofgem

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Regulator berates network operators for ‘unacceptable’ time taken to restore power to thousands of homes

Power companies must “up their game” after thousands of households in Britain faced “appalling conditions” when they were left without power for more than a week after Storm Arwen hit last year, the industry watchdog has said.

Publishing its full report into the response of power distributors to the storm, Ofgem said they were underprepared and provided an “unacceptable service” to customers, with nearly 1m homes losing power and 4,000 of those cut off for longer than a week.

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Nearly one in three children in north-east England on free school meals

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Figures shows 10% rise in FSM across England and school leaders say real child poverty level is even higher

Nearly one in three children in the north-east of England are receiving free school meals (FSM), according to figures that reveal a 10% rise across England, as school leaders say the real level of child poverty is even higher.

The figures released in the Department for Education (DfE) annual school census show that 22.5% of state school pupils are on FSM, up from 20.8% last year, reflecting the increasing number of households receiving universal credit and earning less than £7,400 a year after tax.

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Reliance Industries and Apollo Global Management in £5bn bid for Boots

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Mukesh Ambani teams up with US private equity fund, with Walgreens expected to retain minority stake

The Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries has teamed up with the US private equity fund Apollo Global Management to make a £5bn bid for the UK’s Boots chain.

The US group Walgreens, which has controlled the pharmacy and beauty retailer since 2012, is expected to keep a minority stake under the deal.

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Dom Phillips: editors around world urge Bolsonaro to do more to find missing journalist

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Media organisations call on Brazil’s president to step up efforts to find Phillips and Indigenous advocate Bruno Pereira

Editors and journalists from some of the world’s biggest news organisations have written to the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, to ask that he “urgently step up and fully resource the effort” to find missing British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian Indigenous advocate Bruno Pereira.

Led by the Guardian and the Washington Post, two newspapers for whom Phillips worked as a freelance correspondent, editors from at least 20 major media and press freedom organisations signed the open letter that was published on Thursday.

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Boris Johnson hosts champagne party to celebrate sustainable UK fashion

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PM pledges £80m of government funding to move industry to circular model

There has been little cause for celebration in Downing Street this week. But on Wednesday evening the prime minister, accompanied by his wife, Carrie Johnson, and their children, hosted a champagne reception in honour of sustainable fashion.

Boris Johnson pledged £80m in government funding for a programme of structural change which the British Fashion Council believes can move the UK industry toward a circular model.

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Ukraine: Captured Britons ‘face 20 years in jail’

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Russian state media shows Aiden Aslin, 28, and Shaun Pinner, 48, appearing in court in Donetsk

Russia-Ukraine war: latest developments

Two British men captured by Russian forces while fighting alongside Ukrainian soldiers face 20 years in prison, according to a video shared by Russian state media.

Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, who were serving in the Ukrainian military, were detained in April while fighting in Mariupol.

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Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance fails to get winding-up order thrown out

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Credit Suisse, one of Gupta’s main creditors, started insolvency hearings against GFG companies last month

Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance has failed in an attempt to have a winding-up order thrown out on the grounds that the metals group’s struggles were caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Credit Suisse, one of Gupta’s main creditors, started insolvency hearings against GFG companies last month, in a move that raised concerns for the jobs of 35,000 workers in the UK and in operations around the world. US bank Citibank has brought the claim on behalf of Credit Suisse, its client.

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Report describes ‘fear and intimidation’ at Northumberland county council

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Review found council was ‘paralysed’ due to processing freedom of information requests

Northumberland county council operated in a “climate of fear and intimidation” so extreme that senior officers and councillors were constantly making freedom of information (FoI) requests to dig dirt on each other, a report has found.

An independent governance review into the council found it had become “paralysed” due to the “extraordinary” resources devoted to processing almost 5,000 FoI requests made within three years, many from senior officers and councillors.

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Zero-growth warning for UK economy as petrol prices surge

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OECD singles out cost of living crisis as a cause of Britain’s slide down growth league table

Boris Johnson’s attempt to reset his troubled premiership has received a double blow after petrol prices had their biggest daily rise in 17 years and a leading international thinktank said the UK economy would slow to a standstill next year.

Fears that Britain is heading for a prolonged period of 1970s-style stagflation intensified amid fresh evidence of the damaging impact of the war in Ukraine on the cost of living and growth.

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England going smoke-free by 2030 depends on No 10 willpower

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Analysis: The question is not what is in the Khan review but whether its recommendations will be implement

• Plan to raise smoking age to 21 to be unveiled amid cabinet splits

While much has been made recently of the danger posed by soaring obesity levels, tobacco remains the biggest public health threat the world has ever faced.

Despite its risks being known for decades, 1.3 billion people globally still use tobacco products. They kill 8 million people every year, and more than one million of whom die from exposure to second-hand smoke.

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Two missing after boat capsizes in Devon lake

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Four people rescued and search continues at Roadford Lake near Okehampton

Rescuers are looking for two people missing after a boat capsized in south Devon.

Police said four people had been rescued from Roadford Lake, near Okehampton. Two were discharged by paramedics at the scene and two were taken to Derriford hospital for treatment. Their condition is unknown.

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Home Office’s Rwanda deportation plans face high court challenge

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About 30 asylum seekers expected to be sent to Rwanda on 14 June

Priti Patel’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda as soon as next week is facing a legal challenge under emergency proceedings launched in the high court on Wednesday.

An application for a judicial review claims that the home secretary’s policy is unlawful. Claimants are also seeking an injunction that will attempt to stop the plane from taking off.

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Brazilian police say ‘no evidence of crime’ in search for missing journalist

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Police detain man on drugs and weapons charges but say too early to link arrest directly to disappearance in Amazon of Dom Phillips

Authorities in the Amazon investigating the disappearance of a British journalist and an Indigenous advocate have yet to find any evidence of a crime three days after the men went missing in a remote corner of the rainforest.

Police in the far west of Brazil said on Wednesday their inquiries into the disappearance of Dom Phillips, a longtime Guardian contributor, and Bruno Araújo Pereira, an advocate for Indigenous people, had led to the arrest of one man.

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David Lammy visits Afghanistan to highlight humanitarian crisis

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Shadow foreign secretary says UK government ignoring catastrophe as millions of Afghans go hungry

The shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, has flown to Kabul to see at first-hand the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover.

Lammy is the first senior British politician to visit the country since the west’s chaotic pullout last August. He is being accompanied on his visit by Preet Gill, the shadow minister for international development.

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NHS bosses fear DHSC will use bullying report to blame leadership

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Department of Health and Social Care press release cited negative behaviours but not findings of political pressure

Bullying, discrimination and shifting the blame when things go wrong are rife in the NHS, a government-commissioned inquiry into health service leadership has found.

But NHS England bosses are fearful that Sajid Javid will use the report’s findings selectively to paint an unfair picture of the behaviour of senior managers.

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White NHS nurses twice as likely as black and Asian colleagues to be promoted – study

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Research by Royal College of Nursing suggests racism is ‘endemic’ in health and care

White nurses are twice as likely as black and Asian colleagues to be promoted in the NHS, with minority ethnic staff overlooked due to structural racism, according to research.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said its study suggests racism is “endemic” in health and care. A survey of almost 10,000 nursing staff found that those who are white or of a mixed ethnic background are more likely than black and Asian colleagues to have received at least one promotion since the start of their career.

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