General news

• Quiz the leaders: Join the audience for May v Corbyn

  16-05-2017 23:49
  Do you want the chance to question Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn ahead of the General Election?
  
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• McDonald's pulls 'dad' ad accused of exploiting child bereavement

  16-05-2017 23:42
  McDonald's has pulled its new TV ad and apologised for any upset caused after it was accused of exploiting child bereavement."The fact that we have been able to bring children's grief awareness and the importance of not trivialising such a vulnerable section of society is important in itself, and we can see how the brand were trying to speak to people on an emotional level.
  
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• Labour manifesto is 'completely meaningless'

  16-05-2017 23:40
  
  Liberal Democrats leader, Tim Farron says the Labour manifesto is 'meaningless' after Jeremy Corbyn voted for a hard Brexit.
  
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• Corbyn interview: 'We can do things differently'

  16-05-2017 23:40
  
  Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has told Sky News he believes "we can do things differently and better".
  
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• Farron denies Lib Dems are being squeezed in election campaign

  16-05-2017 23:31
  Tim Farron has denied the Liberal Democrats are being squeezed during the election campaign, as new polling suggests they are failing to gain ground.The Lib Dem leader insisted to Sky News that the party was making progress, saying: "We've got 103,000 members now, it's our biggest membership, we raced past that in the first few days of the election campaign.
  
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• Ian Brown gives evidence in Fred Talbot trial

  16-05-2017 22:37
  Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown has told a court of the moment former TV weatherman Fred Talbot invited a boy to sleep in his tent.Talbot is on trial accused of indecently assaulting several teenage boys on school trips to Scotland, and other charges.Brown, 54, was a pupil at a grammar school in Manchester where Talbot taught biology in the 1970s.
  
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• Union leader’s comments overshadow £50bn Labour manifesto pledge

  16-05-2017 21:46
  
  Jeremy Corbyn launches the Labour election manifesto at Bradford University.Jeremy Corbyn’s biggest trade union backer has said he does not believe Labour will win the election but would have fought a successful campaign if it keeps 200 seats, although that would be the party’s worst result since 1935.The intervention by Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite, overshadowed the launch of Labour’s election manifesto, which set out £50bn spending pledges and higher ra
  
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• Union boss’s comments overshadow £50bn Labour manifesto pledge

  16-05-2017 21:46
  
  Jeremy Corbyn launches the Labour election manifesto at Bradford University.Jeremy Corbyn’s biggest trade union backer has said he does not believe Labour will win the election but would have fought a successful campaign if it keeps 200 seats, although that would be the party’s worst result since 1935.The intervention by Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite, overshadowed the launch of Labour’s election manifesto, which set out £50bn spending pledges and higher ra
  
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• Urgent hunt for girl, 6, after car taken in Leyton High Road

  16-05-2017 21:35
  Sky News' Mark White says there is a "London-wide alert" and officers from across the capital are searching for the girl.The girl, Beatrice Felicia, is Romanian with long black plaited hair and blue eyes.
  
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• Police hunt for girl who was in car when it was 'stolen' in east London

  16-05-2017 21:27
  
  Beatrice Felicia, who was last seen in a brown VW Passat heading towards the Chadwell Heath area, according to Scotland Yard.Officers are appealing for information about the whereabouts of Beatrice Felicia, who was described as having long black plaited hair and blue eyes.Scotland Yard said that the child’s father met a man on Leyton High Road at about 6.30pm with a view to selling the vehicle.
  
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• WPC Yvonne Fletcher murder case stalls over national security concerns

  16-05-2017 21:11
  A suspect in the murder of police officer Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London will not be prosecuted because important evidence is being withheld on national security grounds.Police said they were unable to charge the man without being able to present the "key material" in court.WPC Fletcher died after being shot in the back while she was policing a demonstration against the then-Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 1984.
  
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• Crisis in NHS Grampian as operations postponed

  16-05-2017 21:11 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  SCOTLAND’S health service has been plunged into another crisis after an NHS board admitted it is unable to deliver planned operations within the target timescale.
  
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• West Midlands police unit accused of perjury and falsifying evidence

  16-05-2017 21:02
  
  Tahir Aziz (not pictured) is also on trial.A West Midlands police counter-terrorism unit has been accused in court of perjury, falsifying notebooks and hiding text messages related to the trial of a group of terror suspects who called themselves the “Three Musketeers”.Simon Hussey, a senior officer in West Midlands police’s special projects team, began giving evidence at the Old Bailey trial of four men from the Midlands accused of plotting terror attacks in late April but his
  
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• 'No one seems to know it' Emily Thornberry berated in BBC row over costings in manifesto

  16-05-2017 21:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  LABOUR MP Emily Thornberry was blasted during a BBC interview as she couldn’t explain how the party would fund some of its promises in the manifesto.
  
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• BREAKING: Police launch urgent search for missing girl aged six after car she was in taken

  16-05-2017 20:54 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  A GIRL aged six has been taken in the back of a stolen car in Leyton High Road, London, sparking a major police hunt.
  
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• Emily Thornberry reaches for Labour manifesto figures in live interview meltdown

  16-05-2017 20:50 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  SHADOW foreign secretary Emily Thornberry was forced to reach for a sheet of paper during a live interview on Sky News as Kay Burley pressed her on Labour figures following the launch of the party’s manifesto.
  
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• Theresa May’s claim to be the champion of workers rings hollow | Letters

  16-05-2017 20:38
  
  Theresa May at an election campaign event in Stoke-on-Trent on 16 May 2017. ‘Don’t believe the Tories when they talk about workers’ rights – they are after all the party of big business,’ writes Hugh Kerr.The Conservative manifesto announcement contained some attractive headlines for workers (Report, 15 May), but suggestions that this is the greatest expansion of workers’ rights by a Conservative government ring hollow.For example, the statutory right to take
  
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• Regulation of election campaigning via social media can be improved | Letter from Claire Bassett, chief executive of the Electoral Commission

  16-05-2017 20:38
  
  Yes campaigners in Glasgow ahead of the Scottish independence referendum, during which online campaign advertising did have to include an ‘imprint’.Your editorial (Democracy needs transparency in the age of Facebook, 16 May) reflects a perception of election campaigning through social media as an unknown and unregulated field.The same applies in the rules for non-party campaigners and candidates, and we publish this information on our website for anyone to see.
  
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• Don’t stand in the way of community projects like the Victoria Baths | Letters

  16-05-2017 20:37
  
  The glorious photos of the proudly refurbished Victoria Baths in Manchester (Eyewitness, 15 May) bring to mind the remark by Berthold Lubetkin, designer of Finsbury Health Centre, that “nothing is too good for ordinary people”.The real gents had other private facilities – there were both Russian and Turkish baths in the Midland Hotel.Victoria Baths has been saved by a preservation trust, which might be said to be part of David Cameron’s “big society”.
  
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• Yvonne Fletcher murder inquiry dropped over national security fears

  16-05-2017 20:23
  
  Yvonne Fletcher died after being shot outside the Libyan embassy in 1984.The investigation of a man arrested over the murder of PC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London has been dropped after it was decided that much of the evidence gathered could not be presented because of national security concerns.Detectives said on Tuesday they believed they could identify those responsible for the 1984 murder of Fletcher, but that the evidence prosecutors would be able to present to a court
  
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• 'I escaped Ian Brady' Man reveals how he ran away from depraved Moors murderer aged 7

  16-05-2017 20:19 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  A MAN has told how he escaped the clutches of notorious Moors murderer Ian Brady and accomplice Myra Hindley.
  
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• In Stoke, May marches on with familiar neuron-crushing dullness | Marina Hyde

  16-05-2017 20:04
  
  Theresa May speaks to employees at a Screwfix distribution centre in Stoke-on-Trent. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
  
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• 'I want to see mummy' Heart-wrenching final pleas from Brady's youngest victim

  16-05-2017 20:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  A HORRIFYING audio tape of Ian Brady’s last victim was played to the jury at Chester Assizes during the serial killer's trial years after her callous murder.
  
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• ‘An almost biblical notion of evil’ – why Ian Brady haunts the British psyche

  16-05-2017 20:00
  
  Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans.Along with his accomplice, Myra Hindley, who died in prison in 2002, Brady represented the darkest side of the national psyche: unredeemed and unredeemable.Why was it that Brady was able to embody for so many the almost biblical notion of evil?
  
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• Nicola Sturgeon admits SNP is ‘NOT perfect’ after a decade in power

  16-05-2017 19:57 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  NICOLA Sturgeon today admitted her government's record is "not perfect" as she marked a decade of the SNP in power.
  
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• Cringeworthy moment Diane Abbott is met with silence as she welcomes crowd during speech

  16-05-2017 19:41 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  DIANE ABBOTT was left embarrassed as she greeted a crowd at an annual Police Federation Conference.
  
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• Cries of 'Corbyn, Corbyn' filled the hall. He had waited a lifetime for this | John Crace

  16-05-2017 19:19
  
  ‘Labour would get the extra £48.6bn by asking the wealthiest individuals and businesses to pay a little bit more.No one could ever say that Jeremy Corbyn would die wondering.The same couldn’t be said of many of his shadow cabinet colleagues who followed him on to the platform in the atrium of Bradford University student union for the launch of the Labour manifesto.
  
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• Ronan Kerr: two men held over Omagh police officer's car bomb death

  16-05-2017 19:17
  Two men have been arrested under the Terrorism Act in connection with the murder of Northern Ireland police officer Ronan Kerr.Constable Kerr, 25, was killed by a car bomb in Omagh as he left home for work in April 2011.A 27-year-old man was held in the town on Tuesday morning and a 40-year-old man was delivered into police custody from prison.
  
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• BBC presenter slapped by woman after appearing to touch her breast

  16-05-2017 19:02
  
  BBC presenter Ben Brown was slapped after appearing to touch a woman’s breast as he pushed her away when she interrupted an interview live on air.The BBC news presenter reached out and pushed the woman away, his hand on her chest, as he continued with the interview.
  
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• Labour manifesto 2017

  16-05-2017 18:59 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Labour’s election manifesto was first seen last week when a draft was leaked. This is what has changed.
  
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• Plaid Cymru urges voters: 'Don't hand Tories a blank cheque'

  16-05-2017 18:39
  "Don't hand the Tories a blank cheque" was Leanne Wood's message as she launched Plaid Cymru's manifesto for the General Election.
  
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• Labour gambles on tax and spend – but will the public back it? | Larry Elliott

  16-05-2017 18:30
  
  Jeremy Corbyn launches the Labour party manifesto.Labour’s manifesto has an old-fashioned feel about it. It has been many a year since one of the two main political parties has gone into an election on a platform that is unashamed about the virtues of tax and spend.The document sketches out a picture of Britain in which the size of the state is bigger – apart from during the special circumstances of the financial crisis – than at any time since the 1980s.
  
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• Labour pledges almost £50bn of 'fully costed' spending

  16-05-2017 18:25
  
  Jeremy Corbyn launches the Labour election manifesto at Bradford University.Jeremy Corbyn has published a manifesto with £50bn of tax and spending pledges that asks big business and the better off to fund a series of giveaways across public sector pay, childcare, education, the NHS and social care.Flanked by his shadow cabinet, the Labour leader also pledged to nationalise the railways, Royal Mail, the water industry and parts of the energy market, to cheers from supporters at an event in
  
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• My lucky escape from Ian Brady and Myra Hindley's clutches

  16-05-2017 18:24
  
  A man has told Sky News of his lucky escape as a boy after being invited back to a house by Moors murderer Myra Hindley in 1963.Tommy Rhattigan, then aged seven, said he was waiting for his two brothers in a park when he was approached by Hindley and fellow child killer Ian Brady in the Greater Manchester area in November that year.Brady and Hindley were convicted of murdering five youngsters between July 1963 and October 1965, but Mr Rhattigan believes there are other victims who are unaccounte
  
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• Ian Brady's ashes must not be scattered on Saddleworth Moor, says coroner

  16-05-2017 18:21
  
  Ian Brady's body will not be released until the coroner is assured that his ashes will not be scattered on Saddleworth Moor, where some of his victims were buried.Brady snatched youngsters off the street with Myra Hindley before sexually assaulting them and burying their bodies in the Pennines.Opening an inquest into the death, senior coroner for Sefton, Christopher Sumner, said he also wants assurances that a funeral director and crematorium willing to take Brady's body have been found.
  
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• Lloyds free of taxpayer ownership as ministers sell final shares

  16-05-2017 18:18
  Lloyds Banking Group will be freed from partial state ownership for the first time in almost a decade on Wednesday when the Government confirms it has sold its remaining holding in the UK’s biggest high street lender.Sky News understands that the Treasury offloaded its final shares late in Tuesday's trading session.An announcement from Lloyds that UK Financial Investments' (UKFI) has sold its entire shareholding is expected to be made before the market opens on Wednesday, according to City
  
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• Man arrested over 1984 murder outside Libyan embassy in London is released

  16-05-2017 18:16
  A man arrested in 2015 in connection with the 1984 murder of a British policewoman outside the Libyan embassy in London has been released without charge because crucial evidence was not available for national security reasons, police said on Tuesday.Yvonne Fletcher, who was 25 and had joined the police aged 19, was hit in the back by a shot fired from the embassy while she was policing a demonstration by Libyan dissidents against Muammar Gaddafi, who then ruled the North African country."Therefo
  
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• Prison drone drug smuggling pair jailed for more than 10 years

  16-05-2017 18:11
  Two men who used a drone to fly drugs into a prison have been jailed for more than 10 years.Thomas Natalevicius, 35, of no fixed address, and Dalius Zilinskas, 33, of Grange Road, Luton, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply cocaine and cannabis into The Mount prison in Bovingdon, Hertfordshire.Natalevicius also admitted conspiracy to supply prohibited items into HMP Pentonville.
  
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• Labour manifesto pledges to tax top earners 'to help the many'

  16-05-2017 18:11
  
  Labour has set out plans to raise an extra £6.4bn a year from the top 5% of earners in the country to pay for "a fairer, more prosperous society for the many, not just the few".It said the money could be raised by setting the threshold for the 45p rate of income tax at £80,000 instead of £150,000 and introducing a new 50p rate on earnings over £123,000.Outlining pledges to nationalise water, energy, railways and the Royal Mail, Jeremy Corbyn took aim at Tory leader Theres
  
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• How a child escaped the Moors murderers

  16-05-2017 17:50
  
  Tommy Rhattigan recalls how Myra Hindley grabbed his foot before he escaped from her and Ian Brady into the night.
  
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• How to impeach a president – video explainer

  16-05-2017 17:49 via theguardian.com
  
  With what seems like a constant flow of controversy coming out of the White House, impeachment does not seem completely out of the realms of possibility. But what does it take to impeach a president? Has it ever happened before? And if Donald Trump does get impeached, what happens next? The Guardian takes a look at the history of impeachment, from Andrew Johnson to Bill ClintonWhat would happen if Donald Trump were impeached?Continue reading...
  
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• The cyber attack hero just got offered free pizza for an entire year

  16-05-2017 17:41
  
  Marcus Hutchins helped prevent the spread of the WannaCry ransomware that struck on Friday afternoon.
  
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• RMT train crews to stage further 24-hour walkout after UK bank holiday

  16-05-2017 17:33
  
  Train staff in the RMT union will stage another 24-hour strike across three rail networks in the ongoing row over the future of conductors or guards.Crew on Southern, Northern and Merseyrail services will go on strike on Tuesday 30 May, the day after the next UK bank holiday.Industrial action started more than a year ago on Southern, where RMT members have walked out for 31 days in total.
  
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• Tata Steel agrees British pensions deal

  16-05-2017 17:30
  
  Tata Steel has agreed the key commercial terms of a deal to cut benefits and improve the funding position of its British pension scheme, the Indian company said on Tuesday.The pension scheme was a major stumbling block in talks to merge Tata Steel's British and European steel assets with those of Thyssenkrupp, because the German company was opposed to taking on Tata's 15 billion pounds in UK pension liabilities.The deal, agreed with the scheme's trustees, will see Tata plough 550 million pounds
  
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• El Daily Stormer: Neo-Nazi website is now in Spanish, too

  16-05-2017 17:26
  
  How does a leading neo-Nazi website that has railed against Hispanic immigrants expand its audience beyond a loyal base of U.S. white supremacists? By publishing a Spanish-language edition, of course.
  
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• Brady's lawyer doubts killer knew location of Keith Bennett's remains

  16-05-2017 17:25
  
  Robin Makin says Keith Bennett's body would have been found in the 1980s had Ian Brady known the location.
  
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• 'One rule for one, another for Britain' MEP savages Brussels in European Parliament tirade

  16-05-2017 17:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  AN MEP took to the floor of the European Parliament to blast the EU and its member states for trying to punish Britain in upcoming Brexit talks.
  
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• BREAKING: Ian Brady's body will only be released if his ashes are not scattered on moor

  16-05-2017 17:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  MOORS Murderer Ian Brady's body will not be released by the coroner until assurance can be made his ashes will not be scattered on Saddleworth Moor where he murdered children.
  
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• Tata Steel reports fourth-quarter loss on one-off charges

  16-05-2017 17:02
  
  By Promit MukherjeeMUMBAI (Reuters) - Tata Steel Ltdon Tuesday reported an unexpected fourth-quarter loss due to one-off exceptional items, including charges relating to a deal involving the pension scheme at its businesses in Britain.The fate of Tata's British businesses, including the country's largest steelworks at Port Talbot, has been in the air since Tata Steel said a year ago it planned to sell its British assets following heavy losses.Under a deal, announced on Tuesday, Tata will inject
  
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• Can One Hundred Years of Solitude be read as more than just fantasy?

  16-05-2017 17:01 via theguardian.com
  
  Gabriel García Márquez’s magical novel is packed full of political commentary on real-life events. But can we say that the misogyny and violence don’t matter because none of it is real?“The problem,” says Salman Rushdie, “is that when people say ‘magical realism’, they only hear magic. They don’t hear realism.”I’m tempted to give people a pass on that one. It’s natural enough to focus on the magical elements in books
  
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