General news

• Johnson challenges lawmakers to deliver Brexit

  31-08-2019 23:54
  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson challenged lawmakers to deliver on the Brexit vote and not thwart his plans to take Britain out of the European Union on October 31.Johnson has pledged to deliver Brexit with or without a deal, but opposition lawmakers - and several lawmakers from Johnson's Conservatives - want to act to rule out a no deal Brexit when parliament returns from recess on Tuesday.Previous votes have indicated a majority in parliament opposing a no-deal Brexit, but in a newspaper
  
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• EU's Barnier not optimistic about avoiding a no-deal Brexit - Sunday Telegraph

  31-08-2019 23:35
  The European Union's top Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said he was not optimistic about avoiding a no-deal scenario as the EU could not meet Britain's demands that the backstop for the Irish border is removed from the withdrawal agreement.Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Barnier said that the so-called "backstop" had to stay to protect the integrity of the EU's single market while ensuring an open border on the island of Ireland."I am not optimistic about avoiding a no-deal scenario, but we s
  
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• New camera module forces Apple to make a change to the new iPhones that everyone will notice - PhoneArena

  31-08-2019 21:28 via phonearena.com
  New camera module forces Apple to make a change to the new iPhones that everyone will notice  PhoneArenaiPhone 11 release confirmed - Apple fans could be treated to these new features soon  ExpressListen up, Apple: Here are 6 features I want to see on the iPhone 11  Digital TrendsApple iPhone 11 series complete specifications leaked  Deccan ChronicleApple could release new iPads very soon  iLoungeView full coverage on Google News
  
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• Juventus v Napoli: Serie A – live!

  31-08-2019 20:48
  Serie A updates from a blockbuster meeting in TurinSerie A returns with goals, VAR controversy and MihajlovicAnd you can email Michael or tweet @michaelbutler187.48pm BST Peeeeeeeeep! And we’re off.7.48pm BST So no Sarri in the dugout, although he is somewhere in the stadium, probably chain smoking.Continue reading...
  
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• US Open 2019: Nadal v Chung, Wozniacki beaten by Andreescu – live!

  31-08-2019 20:47
  Updates from Saturday’s play at Flushing MeadowsKonta finds top gear to cruise into fourth roundAnd you can email John or tweet @JohnBrewin_ 7.47pm BST Nadal now has his break, and has gone to 4-2 up on his bespectacled opponent.7.41pm BST Nadal is 3-2 up on Chung, though yet to break his Korean opponent. At the Louis Armstrong Stadium, it’s Alexander Zverev v Aljaz Bedene, with the German 1-0 up in the first set.Continue reading...
  
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• It tolls for thee: £5m needed to save Britain’s last major bell foundry

  31-08-2019 20:46
  Loughborough stakes hopes of survival on lottery bid as historic Whitechapel site fights off developersIt is said that, every day, 20 million people in Britain hear the chimes of a bell cast at Taylor’s of Loughborough. It is the last foundry still casting full sets, known as rings, of church bells. It has produced them for St Paul’s Cathedral and for Yale University. You can even hear one tolling on the AC/DC track Hells Bells.Now, however, the foundry is desperately seeking £
  
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• Burnley 0-3 Liverpool: Premier League – as it happened

  31-08-2019 20:45
  Liverpool set a new club record with a 13th consecutive league victory thanks to an own goal from Chris Wood and classy finishes from Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino 7.46pm BST That’s it for today’s blog. I’ll leave you with Paul Wilson’s match report from Turf Moor. Bye! Related: Roberto Firmino adds shine to Liverpool’s victory over Burnley7.45pm BST And here’s Virgil van Dijk“It’s a big achievement [winning 13 league games in a row], but we have
  
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• Rise of Donald Trump is ‘obscuring lessons of the second world war’, says Sadiq Khan

  31-08-2019 20:36
  Mayor of London condemns US president as ‘poster boy for white nationalism’ and Boris Johnson as ‘ever more rightwing’Sadiq Khan: Lessons of the second world war are at risk of being forgotten, or even rewritten
  The lessons of the second world war risk being forgotten because of the rise of “extreme” rightwing leaders such as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, the mayor of London has said.Before events to mark the start of the conflict 80 years ago, when Germany
  
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• From Bodmin to Berlin, crowds vent their fury at Boris Johnson’s ‘coup’

  31-08-2019 20:30
  Protesters ranged from students at the prime minister’s old Oxford college to retired teachers, children and activistsIn Cambridge’s Market Square, a crowd of families, young people and silver-haired academics listened as Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Masque of Anarchy was read out. Many joined in, from memory, making a collective appeal for non-violent resistance: “Rise, like lions after slumber... Ye are many – they are few.” There were moments of more garrulou
  
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• Lessons of the second world war are at risk of being forgotten, or even rewritten | Sadiq Khan

  31-08-2019 20:29
  As we mark the 80th anniversary of the start of the second world war, with liberal democracies again under siege, Britain should be leading the fight against extremismEighty years ago, the start of the second world war saw Nazi Germany invading Poland. Six years later, up to 85 million people were dead. I’m in Poland this weekend to commemorate the start of the bloodiest war in human history.An entire generation of brave men and women around the globe sacrificed everything to defeat the si
  
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• Hong Kong protests: riot police storm metro station with batons

  31-08-2019 20:13
  Unrest deepens on anniversary of Beijing’s move to limit democratic reforms in territoryHong Kong riot police have stormed a metro station, using batons to beat passengers as violent clashes deepened political unrest in the city for the 13th weekend in a row.Lai, 31, returning home from protests, was in a train car that pulled into the Prince Edward mass transit railway stop in Kowloon just before 11pm. He saw at least 20 police officers on the station platform when suddenly five or six ra
  
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• Tiny Bury was a victim of the global forces draining the life out of football | David Goldblatt

  31-08-2019 20:00
  The club’s demise shows how comprehensively the game has been hijacked from the fansParliament is to be prorogued, the pound is on the slide, the Amazon and the Arctic are burning. In such a context, the demise of Bury football club, expelled from the English Football League (EFL) after 125 years of continuous membership, might seem regrettable, but hardly a matter of wider concern.One could perhaps make the case that this is another signal of the social and economic decline of England&rsq
  
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• Can fashion keep its cool … and help save the planet?

  31-08-2019 20:00
  The catwalk world of glamour and luxury hides a business that thrives on wasteful consumerism. Now the climate crisis is forcing a rethinkIn the last days of August, an influx of slender women to midtown Manhattan signals the onset of fashion week, the biannual round of catwalk shows. After passing on to London, Milan and then Paris, the prevailing sensibility coheres into an agreed style.Only this season, the last of the decade, that sensibility may be about to evaporate. A summer of fire in th
  
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• Maryland court: teen girl who sexted friends violated child pornography laws

  31-08-2019 19:51
  Teenager sent sexually explicit video of herself to friendsLegal expert calls ruling ‘a ridiculous reading of the statute’The top court in Maryland ruled this week that a teen who sent a sexually explicit cellphone video of herself to two friends violated state child pornography law.The teen, referred to in court papers as SK, did not have to register as a sex offender but was ordered to undergo electronic monitoring and probation, which required drug tests and anger management class
  
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• Greece offers sculpture swap in bid for Parthenon marbles

  31-08-2019 19:41
  Prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis makes pitch for pragmatic deal to end historic battle over Elgin treasuresTo Greece’s delight, a bust of Pericles now graces 10 Downing Street. Within hours of assuming office as prime minister, Boris Johnson had placed a plaster likeness of the Athenian soldier-statesman, whom he has long admired, on his desk. Johnson’s knowledge of the ancient world – he studied classics at Oxford and once boasted that he could recite the first 100 lines of
  
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• Football League: Brentford punish Derby as Stoke slump again

  31-08-2019 19:41
  Charlton stay unbeaten, Huddersfield remain winlessSunderland suffer first defeat, Exeter still top of League TwoBirmingham City added to Nathan Jones’s misery with a comeback win over Stoke City at St Andrew’s. The visitors looked like they were heading for their first victory of the season after Liam Lindsay opened the scoring just before the hour mark but two goals in the space of three minutes turned things around as Lukas Jutkiewicz levelled things, then 16-year-old substitute J
  
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• Joker review – Joaquin Phoenix’s villain has last laugh in twisted tale

  31-08-2019 19:40
  Todd Phillips’s daring reboot of the DC Comics antihero is brilliantly brought to life by its star – with a little help from Martin ScorseseJoaquin Phoenix provides a comic-book hero for the left behind with Joker, a brilliantly insurrectionist origins story that landed like a firecracker in the midst of this year’s Venice film festival. Playing the role of Cain to the sunny Abel of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Todd Phillips’s blockbuster charts the formative years of B
  
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• British democracy is brought to its knees – cartoon

  31-08-2019 19:30
  Chris Riddell on Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament
  • You can buy your own print of this cartoon Continue reading...
  
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• Anthoine Hubert killed in F2 crash with Juan Manuel Correa at Spa

  31-08-2019 19:07
  • Hubert’s car hit barriers then collided with Correa’s
  • FIA confirms death and that Correa is in a stable conditionThe FIA has announced that the French driver Anthoine Hubert died after a major accident during the Formula 2 feature race at the Belgian Grand Prix. The race was cancelled after the crash on the second lap at Spa-Francorchamps. The high-speed incident involving Hubert and Juan Manuel Correa saw both their cars take major damage but Hubert’s almost disi
  
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• We have become a land of permanent crisis. This suits the blustering liars of Brexit | Nick Cohen

  31-08-2019 19:00
  This government’s shameless thirst for power is such that it will stop at nothing to deliver no dealBoris Johnson’s lies encapsulate Britain’s democratic decay. They are the bluster of a man who holds parliament and political accountability in contempt. They reveal the corruption of a Brexit movement that has no purpose now other than to secure an empty victory, whatever its original intentions and whatever damage it does to the traditions of Britain’s democracy, once tho
  
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• Fears for Britain’s standing in world of science as students shun chemistry degrees

  31-08-2019 19:00
  Business leaders urge government to take action after university applications fall 21% in three yearsNumbers of UK students applying to study chemistry at university have plunged by more than 20% over the past three years, new figures show.The fall has alarmed business leaders, who say homegrown talent is needed to run Britain’s chemistry industry, which is worth more than £50bn a year to the UK economy. Continue reading...
  
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• James Meek: ‘You read wide and deep, then almost try to forget it’

  31-08-2019 18:59
  The author on creating a believable medieval world for his new novel and how he always returns to TolstoyTo Calais, in Ordinary Time is James Meek’s sixth novel. Set in 1348, it’s the story of three young people from very different backgrounds – an aristocrat, a farmer turned mercenary, and a proctor – making their way across England to British-held Calais against the backdrop of the hundred years war and the fast-approaching Black Death. Meek was previously the Guardian&
  
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• Book clinic: who are the best alternatives to Agatha Christie?

  31-08-2019 18:59
  Margaret Millar, Josephine Tey and Ruth Rendell all mastered the art of immaculately structured whodunnitsQ: I’m looking for the perfect detective story or murder mystery - stand-alone or series - that isn’t Agatha Christie. My requirements: atmospheric; no technology; no misogyny. Does such a thing exist?
  Christina Kruse, 25, translator, LondonA: Screenwriter and author Alex Michaelides writes:First, let me say I hear you. Part of the reason I reread Christie so frequently is becaus
  
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• Israel risks becoming the fall guy in Donald Trump’s ‘shadow war’ with Iran | Simon Tisdall

  31-08-2019 18:57
  Benjamin Netanyahu is counting on fear of conflict with Iran to win crucial election votesDonald Trump’s offer to talk peace with Iran sent a shiver of alarm through Israel’s political and security establishment last week. With a too-close-to-call general election looming on 17 September, Benjamin Netanyahu is counting on his hardline anti-Tehran alliance with Washington – and fear of conflict – to win him crucial votes. A North Korea-style Trump tryst with Iran’s p
  
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• One dead and nine wounded after suspected knife attack in France

  31-08-2019 18:48
  Police arrest one suspect and are hunting a second after stabbings in Villeurbanne, near LyonOne person has been killed and at least nine others wounded near Lyon in central France after a suspected knife attack, a police source told Reuters.A suspect who was carrying a knife was arrested after the attack on Saturday in the city of Villeurbanne, while authorities were hunting for a suspected second attacker believed to be carrying a metal spike used to roast meat. Continue reading...
  
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• Why fans fear a new Judy Garland biopic just won’t do her justice

  31-08-2019 18:33
  As Renée Zellweger depicts the Wizard of Oz star’s declining years, Garland’s devoted following, including our own writer, are torn between excitement and dreadThe dark fedora tipped to one side; the black tux and black stockings: could that really be Judy Garland singing “Forget your troubles and just get happy!” from the 1950 film musical Summer Stock? No, it was me in the 1970s dressed up in my father’s hat and suit jacket, pretending to tapdance on the ti
  
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• Kevin De Bruyne and Sergio Agüero lead Manchester City’s rout of Brighton

  31-08-2019 18:07
  Twenty-seven minutes into the kind of match to which they have long since become accustomed, Manchester City’s fans broke out in applause to support their stricken neighbours. “Stand up for the Bury boys” was the accompanying chant and it would presumably not have taken long, upon a quick survey of the home support, to locate some of the 28,885 who watched the Shakers win 1-0 at Maine Road in their final meeting. That was on Valentine’s Day 1998, when both clubs were in t
  
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• Revolutionary poster designs from cold-war Cuba – in pictures

  31-08-2019 18:00
  An upcoming exhibition at London’s House of Illustration collects 185 posters and magazines from Cuba’s golden age of design, from the 1960s to the early 90s.“The posters tell us that Cuba sees supporting the struggles of liberation movements internationally as an integral part of its own revolution,” says curator Olivia Ahmad.Designed in Cuba: Cold War Graphics is at House of Illustration, London N1 from 27 Sept to 19 Jan Continue reading...
  
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• Javid defends settled status scheme in response to criticism

  31-08-2019 17:56
  Campaigners point to rise in grants for pre-settled status, which has fewer rightsSajid Javid has responded to concerns raised over thousands of EU citizens in the UK having no legal rights after 31 October , by saying “there shouldn’t be a single person that should be concerned about their status”.The settled status scheme has been running since March for EU nationals living in the UK to establish their permanent right to live in Britain. Continue reading...
  
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• From a picnic to the Berlin Wall: my 1989 summer of revolution

  31-08-2019 17:44
  An award-winning foreign correspondent looks back on the human stories that helped bring down the Berlin Wall and East Germany’s regimeIt should have been a normal family chat in late midsummer in Berlin. Kerstin Falkner, 22, and her new partner, Andreas, eight years her elder, were sitting in the back of Metzer Eck, the corner bar run by her mother, Bärbel, discussing where they might go for their holidays.Only one thing was out of key: instead of joining in, Bärbel was sitting
  
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• Two-try Jacob Stockdale helps Ireland squeeze home against Wales

  31-08-2019 17:41
  • World Cup warm-up: Wales 17-22 Ireland
  • Wales’s great surge comes just too lateHow rank are the rankings? There was a moment here when Ireland were in position to replace Wales at the top of them one week after they had conceded 57 points at Twickenham and in a year when they had been well beaten at home by England and in Cardiff. They were 22-3 up, having been overwhelmingly dominant against a team made up of second- and third-choice players before, as if embarrassed by the p
  
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• World War Two veteran breaks own scuba diving record at 96

  31-08-2019 17:27
  A 96-year-old celebrated his birthday on Saturday by breaking his own record as the world's oldest active scuba diver for the third year running, plunging to the depths of the equivalent of a 15-storey building to explore a shipwreck off Cyprus.World War Two veteran Ray Woolley, who turned 96 on Aug. 28, plunged to a depth of 42.4 metres for 48 minutes, the event organisers said."If I can still dive and my buddies are willing to dive with me I hope I can do it again next year," Woolley told Reut
  
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• Economist Ruth Lea reveals Trump's real motive behind post-Brexit trade deal with UK

  31-08-2019 17:27 via feedproxy.google.com
  FORMER civil servant Ruth Lea outlined one of the main motivations behind Donald Trump striking a post-Brexit trade agreement between the US and the UK.
  
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• Hurricane Dorian: Trump flies to golf club as storm approaches east coast

  31-08-2019 17:21
  National Hurricane Center warns of winds and storm surgeEast coast on alert but no immediate mass evacuationsMillions along the US east coast from Florida to North Carolina remained under threat of a deadly strike from Hurricane Dorian on Saturday, even as official predictions for the path of the 145mph monster storm pulled back from from a direct hit on land. Related: The historic hurricanes that made landfall on Florida’s east coastContinue reading...
  
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• Migrant crisis: British Border Force intercepts 54 migrants on flotilla of boats at Dover

  31-08-2019 17:20 via feedproxy.google.com
  BRITISH Border Force has intercepted an army of more than 50 migrants that this morning stormed a beach in Kent in a flotilla of boats.
  
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• US blacklists Iranian tanker Mike Pompeo says is heading to Syria

  31-08-2019 17:19
  Vessel seized by Britain and held in Gibraltar for six weeksAdrian Darya’s captain also sanctioned by US
  The US has blacklisted the Iranian tanker Adrian Darya, saying it had “reliable information” it was transporting oil to Syria in defiance of wide-ranging sanctions on the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Related: Trump tweets photo of Iran rocket site and says US 'not involved' in failed launchContinue reading...
  
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• Search-and-rescue operations launched in Channel amid wave of crossings

  31-08-2019 17:18
  Border Force responds to ‘a number of incidents’ out at seaSearch-and-rescue operations have been launched according to the coastguard after eight people were detained on the Kent coast.Border Force said it was responding to a “number of incidents” out at sea. Continue reading...
  
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• Strikes, IT failures, customer unrest: can BA pull out of this nosedive?

  31-08-2019 17:00
  The carrier is trading on past glories with glitzy ads that fail to reflect years of cost-cutting. But the firm insists it is investing for changeThe recent TV advert celebrating British Airways’ 100th anniversary was framed as a love letter to Britain, narrated by national treasures such as artist Grayson Perry, astronaut Helen Sharman and a phalanx of sporting stars.“We love you, Britain,” gushes Oscar-winner Olivia Colman. Continue reading...
  
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• Ronan Bennett: ‘Top Boy was special to me... I poured it all into the scripts’

  31-08-2019 17:00
  The screenwriter finished series two of his east London drama as his wife, Georgina, was dying. Then Channel 4 cancelled it. Now, thanks to Drake and Netflix, it’s back• Read an interview with Top Boy star Little SimzWhen you’re writing, everything goes into the mix.At one o’clock in the morning, in the Homerton hospital in Hackney, east London, our daughter, Molly, was born. It was a sweltering night, the hottest of the year, the late August bank holiday in 2001. A couple
  
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• If you want to get things done, pause

  31-08-2019 17:00
  Taking time out is crucial. Don’t fill up your whole day and you can kickstart a new sense of rhythmMachines work well at a constant speed – and the faster the better. They are designed and built for it. Whether they are spinning cotton or crunching numbers, regular, repetitive actions are what they excel at. Increasingly, our world is designed by machines, for machines. Digital technology brings them ever more intimately into our lives. We hold our phones in the palm of our hand, bu
  
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• Fraudsters target Chinese students in UK visa scam

  31-08-2019 17:00
  Universities warn that undergraduates are paying out huge sums for fear of being deportedFraudsters are conning Chinese students out of tens of thousands of pounds just days after they arrive at universities in the UK.At the start of August, a University of Nottingham student had her laptop, containing identifying information and bank details, stolen at Heathrow airport. A week later the student, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, received a phone call purporting to be from
  
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• Been duped on Facebook and Amazon’s platforms? Well, you’re not alone | John Naughton

  31-08-2019 17:00
  Allowing third parties access to the online giants is as risky as it is profitableDigital networks have two significant properties: they can expand very rapidly, given the right conditions, and, if they do grow, powerful network effects kick in very quickly. A network effect is the phenomenon whereby the value of a network increases according to the number of people using it. In the 1980s, Bob Metcalfe tried to quantify the multiplier effect of additional users with what became known as Metcalfe
  
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• Four males held over north London stabbing of teenage boy

  31-08-2019 16:51
  Boy, 15, remains in critical condition after incident in Tottenham on Friday A man in his early 20s has become the fourth person to be arrested on suspicion of attempted murder over the stabbing of a 15-year-old boy.The victim is in a critical condition in hospital after the attack in Tottenham, north London, on Friday morning. He was found with multiple stab wounds on Willan Road, in the Broadwater Farm estate, at about 11.15am. Continue reading...
  
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• Billie Eilish condemns German magazine over shirtless cover image

  31-08-2019 16:41
  Nylon Germany withdraws altered image after backlashEilish, 17, says she ‘did not consent in any way’ to pictureA German magazine apologised and withdrew a cover which used an altered picture to show Billie Eilish bald and shirtless, after stinging criticism from the singer herself. Related: Billie Eilish: the pop icon who defines 21st-century teenage angstContinue reading...
  
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• Genteel Cheltenham polarised by Boris Johnson’s ‘coup’

  31-08-2019 16:30
  The Cotswolds town that voted Remain is a Lib Dem target seat. Many see prorogation as a viable strategy – but if it fails to secure a Brexit deal, the PM won’t be the only Tory in troubleWith its elegant Regency buildings, handsome Cotswolds setting and a celebrated literary festival, Cheltenham is not an obvious location for political conflict.But last Thursday protesters gathered outside the office of the local Conservative MP, Alex Chalk, to voice their anger at Boris Johnson&rsq
  
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• Jeremy Corbyn Impersonates Boris Johnson As He Mocks Him For Lack Of Brexit Detail

  31-08-2019 16:27
  Jeremy Corbyn drew laughs in Glasgow after he did an impression of BorisJohnson complete while mocking the PM over his lack of detail in hisannouncements on Brexit
  
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• 'Stop the Coup' protests across the UK – in pictures

  31-08-2019 16:21
  Demonstrators gather to oppose the PM’s move to suspend parliament in the final weeks before the expected Brexit date Continue reading...
  
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• Fierce backlash as Heseltine claims ‘U-turn’ MPs will ‘live with quotations around necks'

  31-08-2019 16:14 via feedproxy.google.com
  LORD HESELTINE, a Remain supporter, claimed Conservative Party colleagues who campaigned on their opposition to prorogation will “live the rest of their lives with quotations around their necks”.
  
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• The greatest threat to life on Earth may come from space - The Guardian

  31-08-2019 16:00 via theguardian.com
  The greatest threat to life on Earth may come from space  The GuardianAsteroid danger: '100% chance of impact' space expert alerts in 'life or death' warning  Express.co.ukChances of a doomsday asteroid impact is 100 percent, says top expert  International Business Times, IndiaJapanese probe prepares to return sample of asteroid to Earth  Digital TrendsAsteroid terror: NASA concern as huge space rock discovered days ago hurtles towards Earth  Exp
  
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• The greatest threat to life on Earth may come from space

  31-08-2019 16:00
  Asteroids and space debris could wreak untold devastation on the planetNext year, Nasa will launch what all involved hope will be the most impactful space mission to date. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) is designed to smash headlong into its target. It’s an attempt to deflect an asteroid as a test of what to do if we spot a similar space rock on a collision course with our planet.It’s hardly news we want to hear at a time of so many domestic problems, but the threat from
  
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