Political news

• Donald Trump and Theresa May to meet in Switzerland

  19-01-2018 23:48 via theguardian.com
  After cancelling UK visit, US president will discuss foreign policy at World Economic ForumTheresa May will meet Donald Trump when they both attend the World Economic Forum in Davos next week. Downing Street and the White House confirmed that the pair would hold a bilateral session, which is likely to focus on foreign policy issues such as Syria and North Korea. Continue reading...
  
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• Nigel Farage Says Claims He Secretly Passed Data To Julian Assange Are 'Conspiratorial Nonsense'

  19-01-2018 23:34
  Nigel Farage has dismissed claims he passed a data to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in secret meetings at the Ecuadorian embassy as “conspiratorial nonsense”.The allegations were made on Thursday in sworn testimony by Fusion GPS founder, Glenn Simpson, to the US House Intelligence Committee which is one of several official bodies investigating alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.Farage is already known to have visited the Ecuadorian embassy where Assang
  
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• Theresa May to meet Donald Trump in Davos

  19-01-2018 23:23 via bbc.co.uk
  The meeting comes after the US president cancelled plans for a trip to London in February.
  
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• Ministers back down in legal battle over disability benefits

  19-01-2018 21:13 via bbc.co.uk
  Campaigners welcome government decision not to appeal High Court ruling on mental health eligibility.
  
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• Ministers back down on cutting mental health benefits

  19-01-2018 20:57 via ft.com
  High Court found in December that new rules made last spring were ‘blatantly discriminatory’
  
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• Government backs down on cutting mental health benefits

  19-01-2018 20:57 via ft.com
  High Court found in December that new rules made last spring were ‘blatantly discriminatory’
  
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• Oil Giant Shell Bids For London Minicab Licence

  19-01-2018 20:25
  Oil giant Shell has been urged to protect workers’ rights as it bids to make an entrance into the London minicab market.A subsidiary of the Anglo-Dutch firm is applying for its own operating licence in the capital.The app, dubbed FarePilot, has been available to drivers since last year and currently uses algorithms to advise them on the most lucrative locations to offer rides for services like Uber.FarePilot “was created to help private hire & taxi drivers make more money and spe
  
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• Donald Trump Cements U-Turn On Abortion View By Comparing US Laws To North Korea

  19-01-2018 20:12
  Donald Trump has described US abortion laws as “among the most permissive in the world” and compared them to those in countries such as China and North Korea.In a speech to anti-abortion activists at the annual March for Life, the President pledged his administration would always defend “the right to life” in order to “build a society where life is celebrated, protected and cherished”.Trump, who was introduced by Vice-President Mike Pence as a ”tireless
  
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• Frank Field demands answers over 'reckless' running of Carillion

  19-01-2018 20:01 via theguardian.com
  Regulators and pension schemes under scrutiny from MPs investigating £900m deficitA committee of MPs has demanded answers from the trustees of Carillion’s pension scheme and regulators as it opened an investigation into how the company collapsed, leaving behind a retirement scheme with a deficit set to hit £900m.Frank Field MP, who chairs the work and pensions select committee, said the company’s implosion “begs questions across government” and promised to tak
  
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• Martin Rowson on Boris Johnson's Channel bridge proposal – cartoon

  19-01-2018 20:00 via theguardian.com
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• 12 Times Donald Trump's White House Insulted Britain In His First Year As President

  19-01-2018 19:35
  It seemed to start so well. Theresa May was the first foreign leader Donald Trump met as president, and their January meeting was so cosy it was defined by the moment they held hands as they walked down a set the stairs together.By December though things had fallen apart and May was forced, not for the first time, to publicly condemn him.On the first anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, Britons could be forgiven for losing count of all the times the President has offended the UK
  
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• McVitie's Digestive Biscuit Packs Get Smaller Partly Because Of Brexit, As Owner Cites Change In Exchange Rate

  19-01-2018 19:31
  Packs of McVitie’s Digestive are to shrink as the manufacturer copes with rising costs partly caused by the post-Brexit referendum fall in the pound’s value.On Friday, confectionary company Pladis, which owns McVitie’s, announced it would cut packs of the biscuit from 500g to 400g, reducing the number of biscuits from 34 to around 27.It follows other food products being shrunk amid rising prices and the pound’s dip after the June 2016 referendum that made it more expensiv
  
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• Penal reform group attacks ‘catastrophe’ of UK prisons

  19-01-2018 19:20 via ft.com
  Ministers warned to cut inmates or boost cash as ‘disastrous’ conditions revealed
  
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• Find cash for prisons or cut inmates, reform group says

  19-01-2018 19:20 via ft.com
  Demand for change amid reports conditions in jails are deteriorating rapidly
  
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• John Worboys release will not be challenged by government

  19-01-2018 19:09 via bbc.co.uk
  Victims will legally fight the decision to release rapist John Worboys but the government will not.
  
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• Trump-Russia inquiry is told Nigel Farage may have given Julian Assange data

  19-01-2018 19:03 via theguardian.com
  Private investigator tells House panel Farage gave thumb drive to Assange, who officials view as a conduit for the Russian governmentNigel Farage may have given Julian Assange a thumb drive of data and was possibly a more frequent visitor than was publicly known to the Ecuadorian embassy where the WikiLeaks founder lives, according to testimony given to US congressional inquiry into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to the Kremlin. Related: The Trump-Russia dossier: why its findings grow m
  
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• McVitie's Digestive Biscuit Packs Get Smaller Because Of Brexit, As Owner Cites Change In Exchange Rate

  19-01-2018 19:03
  Packs of McVitie’s Digestive are to shrink as the manufacturer copes with rising costs partly caused by post-Brexit referendum fall in the pound’s value.On Friday, confectionary company Pladis, which owns McVitie’s, announced it would cut packs of the biscuit from 500g to 400g, reducing the number of biscuits from 34 to around 27.It follows other food products being shrunk amid rising prices and the pound’s dip after the June 2016 referendum that made it more expensive to
  
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• Pregnancy Is Not A Barrier To A Successful Career. Jacinda Ardern Proves That

  19-01-2018 18:46
  New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that she will have a baby in office in a no-nonsense way: “I am not the first woman to multitask,” she stated.The pregnancy is sure to be heavily scrutinised and to attract a welter of stereotyped views about pregnant women losing focus during pregnancy – the whole “pregnancy brain fog” thing, being irrational and the like. Already Ardern has been asked how she will manage with morning sickness. She took it in her
  
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• My Name Is Chris And I Am Fake News

  19-01-2018 18:46
  My name is Chris, and I am fake news. Apparently.I may not have been a winner of an official White House award and I haven’t had a personal shout-out like CNN’s Jake Tapper, but as a writer for a MSM (mainstream media) outlet and recipient of many tweets saying as much, I can safely assume I fit President Trump’s definition.When it became apparent Trump was going to win the election and there would be a need for coverage with a UK slant, I ordered a couple of books to help expl
  
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• 'No specific plans' for Boris Johnson's Channel bridge

  19-01-2018 18:36 via bbc.co.uk
  The foreign secretary reportedly suggested a "fixed link" between UK and France to Emmanuel Macron.
  
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• Donald Trump's Shameful, Shameless First Year In The White House

  19-01-2018 18:32
  This week I, belatedly, finished Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, a 2015 exploration of the new era of public shaming brought about by social media. The book is a thought-provoking study of why disparate, nebulous groups come together online on platforms such as Twitter to gang up on individuals, as well as a look at how the targeted handle en masse shaming and, in some cases, how they’ve grown.Some names profiled in the book you will remember, others just their sto
  
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• Pamela Anderson Slams Piers Morgan For Reducing Her To 'Body Parts And Men' In 'Life Stories' Interview

  19-01-2018 18:27
  Pamela Anderson and Piers Morgan are at loggerheads over her upcoming appearance on ‘Life Stories’.The former ‘Baywatch’ star is the latest guest to sit down for an interview on Piers with the notoriously tear-jerking talk show, where she opened up about her career and life in the public eye.However, in a blog published on her official website, Pamela claimed her upcoming three-hour interview was edited down to 37 minutes of what she felt was reduced to “my body par
  
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• UK savings targets missed in army outsourcing deal

  19-01-2018 18:24 via ft.com
  Concern over Capita’s recruitment contract follows collapse of Carillion
  
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• Smearing Your Lipstick Could Help Save Lives

  19-01-2018 18:24
  It’s just a couple of days left until #SmearForSmear, a social media campaign run by Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust. The campaign encourages people to share the hashtag with lipstick smeared photos of themselves, but so what? It’s just another hashtag, right? What difference does a selfie or a hashtag really make?Well, #SmearForSmear can quite literally save lives.The campaign runs during Cervical Cancer Prevention Week (22-28 January) and over the last three years has reached mill
  
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• Boris Johnson slams UK's infrastructure record, then proposes Channel bridge

  19-01-2018 18:19 via theguardian.com
  Foreign secretary criticises systems of planning in Britain and calls Labour mayor of London ‘Sadiq hashtag useless Khan’Boris Johnson lambasted the UK’s record at delivering major infrastructure projects just days before raising the prospect of erecting a 22-mile bridge across the English Channel to better connect Britain to the rest of Europe. The foreign secretary criticised systems of planning as being “extremely inimical at getting things done at pace and scale&rdquo
  
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• After Carillion we have the chance to build a better country | Jonathan Freedland

  19-01-2018 18:18 via theguardian.com
  The behemoth’s collapse should shatter taboos about borrowing and could herald a new era of public investmentSometimes a single event can destroy not one dogma but two. So it may prove with the collapse of Carillion, the one-time construction company that mushroomed into a behemoth that did everything from paving motorways to managing operating theatres and ladling out school dinners. Most attention has focused on the article of faith that fuelled its rise and rise, and which has been shre
  
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• Is It Really Possible To Go Off Grid?

  19-01-2018 18:09
  In today’s hyper-connected digital world, where we unlock our phones 80 times a day, living a disconnected life has become a distant dream. Landlines and spare change have been relegated to a simpler, long-forgotten time, when we didn’t live our lives online.But thanks to the latest series of Channel 4’s Hunted, and following the recent airing of Celebrity Hunted, the challenge and possibility of going off-grid will be on the minds of many. After all, if some of the UK&rsq
  
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• I Am One Of The Six Residents Of The Isle Of Ulva. Please Help Us Retain Control Of Our Home

  19-01-2018 18:07
  Since it was announced in October that residents of the Isle of Ulva, along with those on neighbouring Mull, would be given the opportunity to attempt a community buyout of the island, there has been a great deal of interest from all over the globe. Articles have featured in newspapers and online in the likes of Australia, France, Singapore and the UAE. There has been great support for the project, but also a certain amount of criticism - land reform can be a divisive topic.For Ulva and our comm
  
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• The Most Difficult Part Of Your Fitness Journey Will Be Starting It

  19-01-2018 18:06
  My first run of the year was not unlike many runs that you – if you leave the house – will experience in your life.Why? Because it nearly didn’t happen.Knowing how good exercise makes me feel doesn’t stop me sabotaging my own good intentions.It doesn’t stop the constant weather app checks. Are the clouds getting gloomier? It doesn’t stop the agonising decision of what to wear. Am I in too many layers? Cold enough for gloves? It doesn’t stop the general f
  
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• The May-Macron Sandhurst Treaty: Barbed Wire And Empty Promises

  19-01-2018 18:03
  We spent the evening in a car park in Calais, six volunteers and 15 teenagers, waiting to see if there was space for the minors in a night shelter. There aren’t enough spaces ― about 60 for around 100 children ― so we’d already had to leave a large number to sleep outside again. These are kids, remember. Sleeping rough. And we are grassroots, NGO volunteers, not government employees ― but without our support the majority of the kids would not have accessed the accom
  
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• UKIP loses another MEP as Jonathan Arnott quits party

  19-01-2018 17:56 via bbc.co.uk
  Jonathan Arnott says Henry Bolton is not right for the job but attacks those "jockeying" to replace him.
  
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• Trump's Attacks On Women Worldwide Mean The Resistance Is Global

  19-01-2018 17:52
  One year ago, on the heels of the largest day of protest in US history and a truly global moment of solidarity on women’s rights, the newly inaugurated president resurrected and radically expanded the harmful global gag rule, a policy that puts politics between a patient and her provider.It’s no coincidence that the first casualties in the administration’s assault on human rights were women. And, as his vile comments on immigration last week make quite clear, it’s no coin
  
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• Ricky Gervais Claims He Would Have Joked About Hollywood Harassment Scandal As Host Of Golden Globes

  19-01-2018 17:50
  Ricky Gervais has said he would have make jokes about the on-going sexual harassment allegations in Hollywood, had he been asked to host the Golden Globes this year.The 2018 ceremony saw famous faces from across the industry come out in support of the Time’s Up movement by wearing black and delivering empowering speeches, but the British comic has said he wouldn’t have been able to resist making a gag about it.Ricky, who has hosted the Golden Globes four times, added he bel
  
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• Tech savvy young MPs pose dilemma for UK parties

  19-01-2018 17:48 via ft.com
  Ensuring politicians have never made offensive comments online is proving difficult
  
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• Donald Trump And The Special, Schmecial Relationship

  19-01-2018 17:43
  Donald Trump may at least – and inadvertently – have liberated Anglo-American relations from the curse of ‘the special relationship’ (SR). For that, if nothing else, those who attach high importance to the friendship, shared cultural hinterland and personal connections that bind the two countries should be grateful.The ‘SR’ is not much more than a monument to the idleness and ignorance of British journalists and their craven dependence on ‘the cuttings&r
  
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• Farage: Assange meeting claims 'are nonsense'

  19-01-2018 17:40 via bbc.co.uk
  A US intelligence committee is told the ex-UKIP leader may have passed "data" to Wikileaks founder.
  
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• Government Will Not Appeal High Court Ruling Over Mental Health Discrimination

  19-01-2018 17:37
  The government has announced it will not appeal a High Court judgement which ruled changes to benefits discriminate against people with mental health issues.The case, brought by a women with psychological difficulties, concluded in December and ruled an amendment to the new Personal Independence Payment (PIP) for disabled people “could not be objectively justified”.It introduced regulations limiting the amount of support people with psychological distress could receive for making jou
  
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• Experts, industry and PM pour cold water on Boris Johnson's bridge

  19-01-2018 17:27 via theguardian.com
  No 10 leads criticism of 22-mile roadway to France engineers say would be expensiveAs ideas go, it has not been a resounding success. Architects, hauliers, the maritime industry, and an MP have so far expressed their scepticism about Boris Johnson’s ambition to build a 22-mile (35km) bridge across the Channel - and even the prime minister has signalled it won’t happen.The foreign secretary proposed the idea on Thursday, telling the French president that it was “ridiculous&rdquo
  
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• Why Does My Child Shun Me In Favour Of Their Mum?

  19-01-2018 17:26
  I work with a LOT of parents! At pretty much every single workshop I run, a dad will come up to me at the end and sheepishly say, “can I ask you a question? Why does our child not settle for me?”. They describe hours of trying to soothe a crying baby, trying to get a toddler to sleep, or trying to comfort a hurt or sick preschooler. The scenarios, whatever they are, almost always end the same way; “s/he will only settle for my partner, I don’t know what I’m doi
  
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• Shared aims mask ‘eternal interests’ for Britain and France

  19-01-2018 17:25 via ft.com
  Macron takes the upper hand as London and Paris seek to reset their relationship
  
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• 'Countdown' Gives Us Its First Rude Word Of 2018, Leaving Nick Hewer Stunned

  19-01-2018 17:06
  We all know that when you’re watching ‘Countdown’ of an afternoon, there’s only one feeling greater than getting a seven-letter word… and that’s when that seven-letter word is rude.After 19 days, 2018 has finally treated us to our first filthy ‘Countdown’ offering of the year, with Susie Dent even giving a warning to presenter Nick Hewer before she revealed it.“Block your ears Nick,” she joked, “There is a US slang term for a fie
  
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• Pop-Up Penguin Surprises Antarctic Researchers

  19-01-2018 16:51
  Researchers in the Antarctic were visited by eight curious penguins over the course of a day as they collected water samples in Newcomb Bay.One of the birds was filmed jumping into their rubber boat during the incident on Tuesday 16th January, and looking at bags on board before jumping back into the sea.The researchers are part of a team working at Casey research station, a permanent outpost run by the Australian Antarctic Division.
  
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• Senior Civil Servant Says Iain Duncan Smith Set 'Unrealistic' Timetable On Universal Credit

  19-01-2018 16:35
  Former DWP minister Iain Duncan Smith set unrealistic timetables for the roll-out of Universal Credit, according to a senior civil servant.Outgoing DWP permanent secretary Sir Robert Devereux has also revealed the ex-Tory leader clashed with then-chancellor George Osborne over cutting benefit costs during his tenure at the department.In an interview with Global Government Forum to mark his last day in office on Friday, Devereux said he believed the nationwide roll-out of the controversial benefi
  
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• Prince William Shaves Hair: Four Men On Making The Tough Decision To Embrace Baldness

  19-01-2018 16:17
  Prince William’s decision to shave his head has become global news, despite the fact millions of men around the world are affected by male pattern baldness.Whether you’re royalty or a regular guy, making the choice to go under the razor and embrace baldness can be tough.But for some, the decision to ditch thinning locks can mark the start of a new era of body-confidence, with a badass look to suit.In light of William’s new style, we spoke to four guys about their expe
  
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• Momentum Barbara Ntumy on Corbyn's 'exciting new vision'

  19-01-2018 16:11 via bbc.co.uk
  Taking to the potter's wheel, Momentum Barbara Ntumy looks at Jeremy Corbyn's "exciting new vision".
  
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• From Hot Pants To Hoedowns... 10 Times Kylie Minogue Redefined Pop Music

  19-01-2018 16:09
   After 30 years of bothering charts around the world, Kylie Minogue is one of those rare things: a pop star with longevity.Key to her ongoing success is her constant reinvention, which has helped her clock up 50 UK Top 40 singles, bag multiple awards from Brits to Grammys, sell out tours across the globe and earn National Treasure status in the process. Not bad considering she’s not even a Brit.But when it comes to her musical output, Kylie often doesn’t get the credit she reall
  
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• Child refugees at Calais aiming to leave France for UK

  19-01-2018 16:09 via bbc.co.uk
  After President Macron's visit to the UK, the British government makes a renewed pledge to allow more child refugees to come to Britain.
  
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• 'Celebrity Big Brother': Rachel Johnson Goes On The Defensive Over Boris's Hair

  19-01-2018 16:09
  As soon as Rachel Johnson was announced for ‘Celebrity Big Brother’, we knew at some point she was going to fend off questions about her brother, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.So far this series, she’s managed to avoid having to discuss him too much, but she finally cracked yesterday, when her housemates crossed a line and dared to mention… his hair.During a discussion in the bedroom - seen in Friday’s (19 January) highlights show - Amanda Barrie queried “w
  
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• Irish message on Brexit and EU's future

  19-01-2018 16:06 via bbc.co.uk
  BBC Europe correspondent Adam Fleming looks at Brexit messages in the Irish PM's speech.
  
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• Ukip MEP Quits Party With Blast At Leader Henry Bolton

  19-01-2018 15:43
  A Ukip MEP has quit the party in protest at Henry Bolton’s leadership – and also claimed there is no one who could do any better.Jonathan Arnott, MEP for the North East, launched an astonishing attack on his now former colleagues in his resignation statement, blasting the “sewer” of party politics.Arnott’s decision will heap further pressure on Ukip leader Henry Bolton, who faces a showdown meeting with the party’s National Executive Committee on Sunday over w
  
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