General news

• France's Safran improves Silvercrest engine design - executive

  15-10-2018 23:50
  France's Safranhas improved the design of its Silvercrest engine to prevent a repeat of factory delays and plans further testing in the second quarter of next year to confirm the breakthrough, the head of its engines division told Reuters on Monday.Safran has suffered delays and penalties over the small new engine, but won a vital reprieve on Monday when business jet operator NetJets agreed to buy up to 150 future Cessna Citation Hemisphere jets powered by the French-designed powerplant."NetJets
  
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• May tells Sinn Fein UK committed to no hard Irish border

  15-10-2018 23:38
  (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May reaffirmed on Monday in a meeting with Sinn Fein's leaders the UK's commitment to there being no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland and no border in the Irish sea, May's office said in a statement.
  
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• Police stop driver going down M60 near Manchester on bare metal wheel rim

  15-10-2018 23:31
  Police officers were left stunned after they stopped a car on the motorway being driven on a metal wheel rim.Officers said the driver of the badly damaged Citroen believed it was "acceptable" to be driven on the M60 Manchester Outer Ring Road despite the vehicle having seen better days.Police stopped the driver after receiving "numerous" reports from concerned motorists.
  
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• Bed designer denies manslaughter over baby's choke death

  15-10-2018 22:32
  A baby who tried to wriggle out of his cot and was "starved of oxygen" when his head became stuck died due to a bed designer's gross negligence, a court has heard.Jurors at Leeds Crown Court heard how Oscar Abbey, from York, was found by his parents and died of positional asphyxia on 3 November 2016.The owner of the company that sold the bed, Craig Williams, is on trial accused of gross negligence manslaughter.
  
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• Balachandran deportation: family refuses to board flight to Australia

  15-10-2018 22:28 via theguardian.com
  Four paramedics accompanied 61-year-old to Heathrow airport after experts warned there was high risk of death A family has refused to board a deportation flight to Australia because of fears their father might have a fatal stroke if they did so.Sangarapillai Balachandran, who turns 61 on Tuesday, has previously had three strokes and suffers from high blood pressure which doctors have linked to stress. An expert medical report says he could be in serious danger if he flies. Continue reading...
  
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• May says Irish backstop can't derail deadlocked Brexit talks

  15-10-2018 21:58
  Prime Minister Theresa May urged the EU on Monday not to allow a stand-off over a 'backstop' for Ireland to derail Brexit talks, saying she believed a deal was still achievable as a top EU official said chances of a no-deal divorce had increased.Addressing a rowdy session of parliament before she headed to Brussels for a summit on Wednesday, May remained upbeat but repeated she would not agree to anything that could split the United Kingdom.With less than six months before Britain leaves the blo
  
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• Farage, back in circulation, says Brexit talks 'hit a wall'

  15-10-2018 21:43
  Speaking on Monday as part of the "Leave means Leave" group, he told supporters he thought there was a danger that Brexit might not happen.As head of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), Farage was a leading figure in the 'leave' camp in the run-up to Britain 2016 referendum on EU membership.With less than six months to go before Brexit, Prime Minister Theresa May's government has yet to agree a divorce deal.
  
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• Theresa May faces frantic 48 hours to save Brexit plan as talks stall

  15-10-2018 21:42
  Theresa May faces a frantic 48 hours to try to save her Brexit negotiating strategy after she admitted talks had ground to a halt because of the EU’s insistence upon a Northern Ireland-only backstop.The prime minister is expected to plead with EU leaders to drop their Irish backstop proposal at a make-or-break summit dinner on Wednesday night after seeking the support of members of her cabinet on Tuesday morning.With time running out before Wednesday’s meeting, May used an emergency
  
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• Jeremy Corbyn tells Labour MPs to reject ‘false choice’ on Brexit

  15-10-2018 21:32
  Jeremy Corbyn and shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, addressed a private meeting of Labour MPs and peers.Jeremy Corbyn has told Labour MPs to hold firm to the party’s position on Brexit, calling it a “false choice” that they had to vote for Theresa May’s final agreement or risk a no-deal outcome.Corbyn and the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, addressed the private meeting of Labour MPs and peers on Monday night, amid speculation that up to 30 MPs would consider
  
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• Posties snub share sale as Royal Mail value hovers near IPO price

  15-10-2018 21:18
  The vast majority of Royal Mail staff have snubbed the chance to sell shares they were handed during its 2013 privatisation after a savage profit warning wiped hundreds of millions of pounds from the company's value.The tiny proportion of Royal Mail workers who elected to sell reflects disappointment among employees about the recent decline in its share price.The 613 shares handed to all UK-based staff in 2013 were still worth more than £2000 at Monday's closing price, and Royal Mail has d
  
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• British student Matthew Hedges charged with spying in United Arab Emirates

  15-10-2018 21:12
  British student Matthew Hedges has been charged with spying "for a foreign state" in the United Arab Emirates.The 31-year-old was detained in May as he tried to leave Dubai airport following a study trip to the region for his PHD at Durham University.For much of the last five months he has been held in solitary confinement and has been given few details of what he is alleged to have done.
  
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• British academic charged with spying by United Arab Emirates

  15-10-2018 20:56
  A British academic has been charged with spying in the United Arab Emirates, the country’s authorities said, five months after he was arrested at the end of a study trip.Matthew Hedges, 31, a doctoral student at Durham University, was arrested on 5 May at Dubai airport after a two-week visit and has been kept in solitary confinement since then, his wife Daniela Tejada, said last week.
  
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• Report: Ecuador tells Assange to curb speech, look after cat

  15-10-2018 20:49
  LONDON (AP) — Ecuador has formally ordered Julian Assange to steer clear of topics that could harm its diplomatic interests if he wants to be reconnected to the internet, according to a memo published in a local media outlet Monday.
  
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• Minister Tracey Crouch Fights Back Tears As She Pledges To Tackle Loneliness In Memory Of Jo Cox

  15-10-2018 20:39
  A government minister fought back tears as she paid tribute to the murdered MP
  
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• Theresa May presents Brexit: the third-rate village pantomine

  15-10-2018 20:32
  Theresa May during a visit to social group in London, on the day she made a statement to the Commons on Brexit.Brexit can make fools of the cleverest people, so has a field day making fools of fools.
  
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• EU's Tusk says 'let's not give up' on Brexit, but warns of no deal

  15-10-2018 20:21
  European Council President Donald Tusk said on Monday that the 27 states remaining in the bloc after Britain leaves must be ready for a no-deal Brexit, a scenario he said was "more likely than ever before".With less than six months to go before Britain's departure, talks stalled at the weekend over how to ensure there is no return to a hard border between the British province of Northern Ireland and EU-member Ireland.Tusk said all parties must do their best to reach a deal, adding that he had in
  
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• EU’s Donald Tusk Warns Theresa May That A No Deal Brexit Is Now ‘More Likely Than Ever Before’

  15-10-2018 19:55
  The EU has warned Theresa May that a no-deal Brexit is "more likely than ever
  
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• Harry & Meghan’s First Official Royal Tour

  15-10-2018 19:53
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• Anger and blockades as fracking starts in UK for first time since 2011

  15-10-2018 19:42 via theguardian.com
  Operations start at Lancashire site after protesters block entrance and nearby roadFracking has begun in the UK for the first time since 2011 despite an attempt by protesters to blockade the entrance to the Lancashire site.Activists from campaign group Reclaim the Power used a van to block the entrance to a site on Preston New Road near Blackpool for 12 hours from 4.30am on Monday, but the shale gas company Cuadrilla said all the equipment it needed to frack was already there and it had started
  
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• Everything You Need To Know About The Yemen Conflict

  15-10-2018 19:25
  Yemen is witnessing the world's "worst humanitarian crisis" according to the
  
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• Boris Johnson warns against "Brexit in name only"

  15-10-2018 19:01
  LONDON (Reuters) - Former foreign minister Boris Johnson said on Monday Britain must be able to vary tariffs and strike trade deals after Brexit, otherwise it would not have really left the European Union.
  
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• David Goldblatt's photographs: documenting the casual horror of apartheid South Africa

  15-10-2018 19:00 via theguardian.com
  Goldblatt’s photographs capture the understated unease of living an ordinary life in a society that was anything but normalThe photograph makes me squirm. Four young women, cling-wrapped in awkward swimsuits and perched on high heels, stand on display. One smirks, the other three look unsure. They clutch their competition numbers and present their naked white legs for consideration by the unseen judges.Behind the stage, a crowd of mostly women and children cluster around the elevated stage
  
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• David Goldblatt and the everyday reality of South African racism – in pictures

  15-10-2018 19:00 via theguardian.com
  David Goldblatt considered himself a documentarian rather than an artist, and the central concern of his work was apartheid. But rather than the brutal, visceral horrors, his photographs captured the apparently mundane details of daily life in a country ruled by racism, and the result is an eerie, unsettling insight into everyday moral compromise. Now, Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art presents David Goldblatt: Photographs 1948-2018 – a retrospective already commissioned when the a
  
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• Border blockade: Irish riddle defies creative Brexit minds

  15-10-2018 18:59
  Brains, sweat and toil over the past week brought British and EU civil servants to the brink of a Brexit deal at the weekend, but in the end the painful history and fraught future of a divided Ireland defeated them.EU sources familiar with events in the European Commission's Brussels headquarters over the weekend told Reuters more work was needed on the so-called Irish "backstop".Teams led by Oliver Robbins, May's Europe adviser, and Sabine Weyand, German deputy to French chief EU negotiator Mic
  
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• With talks deadlocked, May says Irish backstop cannot derail Brexit talks

  15-10-2018 18:55
  Prime Minister Theresa May urged the European Union on Monday not to allow a stand-off over the so-called Irish backstop to derail Brexit talks, saying she believed a deal was still achievable in the coming weeks.Addressing a rowdy session of parliament before she headed to Brussels for a summit on Wednesday, May was upbeat about the chances of a deal, but repeated she would not agree to anything that could split the United Kingdom.With less than six months before Britain leaves the bloc, talks
  
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• She came, she saw, she conquered, UK woman claims conker crown

  15-10-2018 18:53
  Standing in a rain soaked English village, more than 200 competitors armed with horse chestnuts dangling from shoelaces faced off for the World Conker Championship.The quintessential British school playground pastime involves competitors taking it in turns to launch their conkers in a bid to break those of their opponents.Victory can also be claimed if you force your opponent's shoelace to become knotted three times.
  
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• Brexit: EU insistence on Northern Ireland backstop unacceptable, May tells MPs

  15-10-2018 18:50
  Theresa May faced questions from sceptical MPs on both sides of the House of Commons.Theresa May has declared she “cannot agree to anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom” as she told sceptical MPs the EU’s insistence on retaining the Northern Ireland backstop was unacceptable.The prime minister said while she had proposed the UK would remain in a countrywide “customs solution” as an alternative, the EU had told her there was not enough time to w
  
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• Punching mirrors and scrapbooking: things people only do in the movies

  15-10-2018 18:42 via theguardian.com
  Actor Lili Reinhart asked Twitter if it’s only in films that people in a panic splash water on their faces. But what are the other scenarios we only ever see on screen?Suspension of disbelief comes with the territory when we enter a cinema. Action heroes always emerge unscathed from a hail of bullets, while everyone in a musical, even the passersby, will know all the steps in an apparently spontaneous dance routine. But what of the behavioural eccentricities restricted to the screen? The R
  
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• From the Cookie Monster cat to ballistic missiles: when text and email alerts go wrong

  15-10-2018 18:41 via theguardian.com
  The US embassy in Australia spammed recipients with a picture of a cat this week – but that’s nothing compared with other recent message failsThe US embassy in Canberra, Australia, sent out an email invitation this week to untold numbers of recipients, in Latin, with a picture of a cat holding biscuits in a turquoise Cookie Monster onesie. It was, of course, an error, though not one I can see any reasonable person being truly irked by. It also wasn’t the first of its kind. In 2
  
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• Meghan and Harry announce pregnancy with baby due in spring

  15-10-2018 18:40
  The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are on tour in Australia.The couple have just started a tour in Australia, where a new poll showed an slight increase in support for a republic despite the global interest in the duke and duchess’s wedding in May.Kensington Palace said there would be no change to the itinerary of the duke and duchess’s tour, which includes Fiji and Tonga, despite travel advice that pregnant women should consider not travelling to the countries because of the “mode
  
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• Gatwick accused of making second runway 'by the back door'

  15-10-2018 18:10
  Residents near Gatwick fear the airport will add hundreds of flights daily by using emergency runway.Gatwick airport has been accused of creating a second runway “by the back door” through plans to put its emergency runway into regular use, adding hundreds of extra flights every day.The airport, the second biggest to serve London, lost out to Heathrow when the government’s Airports Commission recommended where the next full runway should be built in south-east England.
  
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• Manchester United shares soar amid Saudi prince takeover talk

  15-10-2018 18:05
  Shares in Manchester United have surged in New York amid reports Saudi Arabia's crown prince is considering a takeover of the club.The Sun newspaper reported Mohammed bin Salman, currentlybattling claims his country has murdered a prominent journalist , was due to meet club co-owner and co-chair Avram Glazer in the kingdom.The paper said he was keen to take on the spending power of fierce local Premier League rivals Manchester City, owned by Abu Dhabi's Sheikh Mansour for the past decade.
  
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• Perspectives on adding folic acid to flour to prevent spinal bifida

  15-10-2018 17:56
  Of course the planned fortification of flour with folic acid will help – where the cause of spina bifida is nutritional deficiency of folic acid (All UK flour to be given folic acid additive, 15 October).In some parts of the world consanguineous marriages are commoner than in others.
  
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• FTSE shrugs off Brexit impasse while Convatec and Superdry sink

  15-10-2018 17:56
  MILAN/LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's top share index managed a modest gain on Monday as a deadlock in Brexit talks depressed domestic stocks but helped multinational exporter companies as it weakened the pound.
  
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• Man saves stranded horses from Storm Callum floods

  15-10-2018 17:52
  A man in Wales had to dive into action to save his horses after they became stranded in floodwaters in a field after Storm Callum.Gareth Silcox jumped into the water at the weekend to lead the animals to safety.Becky Eardley shared video and photos of Mr Silcox swimming through the submerged field, leading one of his horses, which had become trapped by a fence, back to safety.
  
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• ‘Doing a Freddie’ is the sure way to make yourself a pantomime villain | Robert Kitson

  15-10-2018 17:46 via theguardian.com
  Freddie Burns’s showboating blunder that cost Bath the match is a reminder to players to stop behaving like 12-year-oldsAt least Freddie Burns is in good company. Virtually every sport, at some stage, has produced a fall guy whose ill-advised showboating has gone viral and reminded us all of the value of humility. For Burns read Leon Lett of the Dallas Cowboys, guilty of a similar error in the 1993 Super Bowl, or the great American jockey Bill Shoemaker, who stood up in his stirrups to cel
  
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• Last-ditch legal bid to stop deportation from UK of seriously ill man

  15-10-2018 17:45
  Balachandran (centre) with his wife Shanthy (left), son Pranavan and daughters Karthika and Sinthuja.A last-minute legal challenge has been lodged with the Home Office to prevent the removal of a man whose life will be at risk if he flies, according to an expert medical report seen by the Guardian.The Home Office told the Balachandran family that Sangarapillai Balachandran, 60, a Sri Lankan Tamil with Australian citizenship, would be flown to Australia with his wife and three children on a Qatar
  
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• Commons bullying inquiry suggests John Bercow should consider position

  15-10-2018 17:38 via theguardian.com
  Damning report finds culture of ‘deference and silence’ sought to cover up misconduct
  • Westminster MPs treated staff like servants, inquiry findsParliament’s current leadership is incapable of changing a widespread culture of bullying and harassment, an independent inquiry has found, suggesting officials including the House of Commons Speaker, John Bercow, should consider standing down.The independent report by Dame Laura Cox said there was a tradition of “deference
  
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• Commons bullying inquiry suggests Bercow should consider position

  15-10-2018 17:38
  The inquiry was prompted by allegations of bullying against the House of Commons Speaker, John Bercow, which he denies.Parliament’s current leadership is incapable of changing a widespread culture of bullying and harassment, an independent inquiry has found, suggesting officials including Speaker John Bercow should consider standing down.The independent report by Dame Laura Cox said there was a tradition of “deference and silence” that “actively sought to cover up abusive
  
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• UK will not be left in "limbo" after Brexit - May

  15-10-2018 17:36
  LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday she had been clear in negotiations to leave the European Union that a future trading relationship had to be linked to a divorce deal to avoid Britain being left "in limbo".
  
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• Fracking for shale gas begins in Lancashire amid protests

  15-10-2018 17:28
  Fracking for shale gas is under way in Lancashire amid protests against the controversial process.Energy firm Cuadrilla started hydraulic fracturing at the site in Little Plumpton on Monday, with the work set to continue for three months.A High Court appeal to stop the fracking was unsuccessful on Friday.
  
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• DUP's Foster hoping for "sensible" Brexit deal

  15-10-2018 17:23
  The leader of the Northern Irish party propping up British Prime Minister Theresa May's government very much hopes a "sensible" Brexit deal can be reached, calling on Monday for cool heads in the negotiations."There's no point in standing back and shouting at each other," Arlene Foster told reporters referring to a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar later on Monday.
  
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• PM May says doesn't want to see Ireland Brexit backstop used

  15-10-2018 17:14
  LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May said she wanted to have a new customs arrangement in place with the European Union by the end of December 2021, but ideally would like it to come in sooner so that a backstop arrangement would never have to be used.
  
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• Germany deports September 11 suspect to Morocco

  15-10-2018 17:14
  Germany deports a 44-year-old man to Morocco after he was convicted in 2006 of helping three of the September 11 attackers.
  
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• Marc Sutton: Tributes for Briton shot dead by hunter as friends fight to change rules

  15-10-2018 17:10
  The friends of a British man shot dead by a hunter while cycling in the French Alps have paid tribute to him, as they begin a campaign to change hunting rules in the region.Marc Sutton, a 34-year-old restaurant owner, was described as "a headstrong, hardworking, generous and incredibly kind person who lived life to the full".Mr Sutton's friends said: "We will miss our friend Marc more than words can say.
  
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• Cancer lie husband 'stole years of my life'

  15-10-2018 17:09 via bbc.co.uk
  David Carroll told his wife he had leukaemia when they met and kept up the pretence for nine years.
  
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• Bracing for Brexit, Dutch regulator seeks more resources - sources

  15-10-2018 17:06
  The Dutch financial markets regulator, already scrambling to process a flurry of relocation requests from UK-based companies, will need about 10 percent more staff to cope with the extra work caused by Brexit, sources close to the matter told Reuters.Amsterdam is competing with European Union cities including Frankfurt, Paris and Dublin to attract business from London, with all chalking up recent major relocation wins ahead of Britain's departure from the EU in March.More than 20 trading firms h
  
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• Theresa May says Brexit deal still 'achievable' despite differences

  15-10-2018 17:05 via bbc.co.uk
  The prime minister calls for "cool heads" as the UK and the EU search for a deal ahead of a key summit.
  
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• Dudley Stabbing: Man Charged With Murder After 28-Year-Old Stabbed To Death In Car Park

  15-10-2018 16:53
  A man has been charged with the murder of a 28-year-old who was stabbed to
  
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• Driver stopped in car with three tyres on M60 near Bury

  15-10-2018 16:50 via bbc.co.uk
  Concerned motorists called police after seeing the Citroen being driven on the rim of one wheel.
  
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