Political news

• Russia spread fake news via Twitter bots after Salisbury poisoning – analysis

  19-04-2018 23:30
  Propaganda from Russian-operated accounts grew by 4,000% in aftermath of attack, Whitehall saysRussia used trolls and bots to unleash disinformation on to social media in the wake of the Salisbury poisoning, according to fresh Whitehall analysis. Government sources said experts had uncovered an increase of up to 4,000% in the spread of propaganda from Russia-based accounts since the attack,– many of which were identifiable as automated bots.Theresa May highlighted the cyber-threat from Rus
  
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• Ministers 'want to help with Windrush financial losses'

  19-04-2018 23:14 via bbc.co.uk
  Liz Truss says the government will "look sympathetically" at compensation for Windrush migrants.
  
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• Vince Cable Demands Parliamentary Inquiry Into Anti-Semitism, And Wants Party Leaders To Appear

  19-04-2018 22:18
  Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable plans to call for a Commons committee to investigate anti-Semitism in politics, HuffPost UK has learnt. The former business secretary will write to the influential chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, Maria Miller, to ask the cross-party group she heads to investigate anti-Jewish prejudice. Cable says the leaders of all major political parties, including Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, should be called to give evidence should Miller, a Tory MP,
  
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• SFO core budget boosted by 50% after funding criticism

  19-04-2018 20:40 via ft.com
  Fraud agency cuts reliance on ‘blockbuster’ cash for big cases
  
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• SFO budget boosted by half after funding criticism

  19-04-2018 20:40 via ft.com
  Fraud agency cuts reliance on ‘blockbuster’ cash for big financial cases
  
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• Scotland seeks softer UK drugs laws to allow for Glasgow ‘fix room’

  19-04-2018 20:28 via ft.com
  Rise in deaths spurs campaign for ‘safe drug-consumption facility’
  
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• Tory MPs among backers of motion demanding vote on EU customs union

  19-04-2018 20:27
  Theresa May faces new rebellion after House of Lords defeat Theresa May next week faces a show of defiance from MPs fighting to keep the UK in a customs union with the EU after 10 select committee chairs tabled a motion aimed at forcing a vote on the issueThree Conservatives – Bob Neill, Nicky Morgan and Sarah Wollaston – are among the signatories to the motion, which urges the government to “include as an objective in negotiations ... the establishment of an effective customs
  
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• Aisha Chithira, Who Died After Leaving Abortion Clinic, 'Did Not Seem Seriously Ill', Nurse Insists

  19-04-2018 20:14
  A nurse has insisted a woman who died after being discharged from an abortion clinic appeared to be well enough to leave, despite vomiting and hyper-ventilating and appearing “not with it all”, according to the taxi driver who collected her.At the start of a week-long inquest at West London Coroner’s Court into Aisha Chithira’s death, nurse Gemma Pullen denied a claim Chithira was “swaying” and appeared “drunk” as she left the Marie Stopes clinic.C
  
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• Vince Cable calls for break-up of Google, Facebook and Amazon

  19-04-2018 20:09
  Recent scandals have changed web giants from heroes to villains, says Lib Dem leaderVince Cable has compared Google, Amazon and Facebook to the US oil monopolies that exploited their market power more than a century ago – and called for them to be broken up.In a speech in London, the Liberal Democrat leader said a series of recent scandals, including revelations about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, meant the “tech titans” had “progressed from heroes to villains very qu
  
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• Lorna Miller on Boris Johnson's warning about 'going soft' on knife crime – cartoon

  19-04-2018 20:00
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• Cheltenham Race Abandoned After Horse 'Dame Rose' Dies On Hottest Day Of The Year

  19-04-2018 19:51
  The hottest day of the year has forced races at Cheltenham to be abandoned  as a horse collapsed and died during the hot weather.Animal rights activists have hit out at organisers after Dame Rose, a five-year-old mare, died following a two-and-a-half mile hurdle race on Thursday in which she finished fourth.Today is the hottest day in April since 1949, with the mercury hitting 28.8C in Northolt - just 0.6C shy of the hottest April day ever.The fourth race of the day, which wa
  
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• MPs to question HMRC on refusal to aid French inquiry into top Tory donor

  19-04-2018 19:41
  Tax authority’s decision over mobile firm Lycamobile called ‘completely inappropriate’MPs are to investigate an HM Revenue and Customs decision to turn down a French request for help with a criminal inquiry into a major Conservative party donor. The Treasury select committee and the public accounts committee want to explore why tax officials rejected a request from the French authorities to help with an inquiry involving the mobile network operator Lycamobile. Continue reading.
  
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• The Guardian view on Stephen Lawrence: we owe his parents better | Editorial

  19-04-2018 19:40
  His family forced British society to change its attitudes to race. But 25 years after his murder, progress is still too slow – and in some areas we are regressingIt is 25 years since a tragedy and crime evolved into a national scandal. Two of the five original suspects in the racist murder of 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence were jailed almost two decades later, following advances in forensic science, but Scotland Yard says it has no further leads. The time it took to secure those convictions,
  
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• The real lesson of Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech | Letters

  19-04-2018 19:33
  Fifty years on from the notorious speech, Labour MPs Kate Osamor and Preet Kaur Gill and MEP Claude Moraes join union leaders and anti-racism campaigners to warn of creeping Powellism in today’s Conservative partyTomorrow, 20 April, is the 50th anniversary of Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech (Opinion, 16 April). This year, on the same day and in the same room as Powell made his speech, Birmingham will host a meeting celebrating its status as a multicultural city. P
  
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• Nick Clegg targets Brexiters in drive-by shooting | John Crace

  19-04-2018 19:20
  Former leader of Lib Dems packs out venue for his greatest hits – and some new onesVince Cable had spent the morning giving a speech on Taming the Tech Giants. Almost entirely for his own benefit as the event went almost entirely unnoticed and unreported. Taming indifference is Vince’s real problem these days. Hard to believe given the party’s standing under Tim Farron, but the Liberal Democrats have slid even further into irrelevance with Cable as their leader.Over at the Inst
  
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• Robert Halfon’s views on education cause concern | Letters

  19-04-2018 19:17
  Readers respond to an interview with the chair of the education select committeeRobert Halfon’s quaint notion that vocational training should pass the “dinner-party test” is an indicator of how shallow his supposed blue-collar Conservatism is (‘The Tory party should change its name to the Workers’ party. I am 100% serious’, 17 April). How many people bringing children up in poverty are going to dinner parties where they would be looked down on because their ch
  
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• Daphne Project: MEPs and authors crank up pressure on Maltese authorities

  19-04-2018 19:15
  Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and Tom Watson among those calling for more to be done to investigate murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia
  Malta’s government has been told to take urgent action to implement EU anti-money laundering rules, as MEPs rang the alarm about the dangers for journalists investigating financial crime following the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.
  The pressure intensified as the country’s prime minister, Joseph Muscat, attended the Commonwealth heads of
  
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• Commonwealth summit: can Britain still shape the world post-Brexit?

  19-04-2018 19:15
  International trade is firmly on the agenda as the group of 53 disparate nations meet in LondonAny 80-year-old institution based on the contours of a defunct 19th-century empire and largely held together by the charming drive of a 91-year-old woman is going to struggle to prove its modern relevance. Described once in the New Statesman by James Fenton as “one of the world’s least obnoxious institutions”, the Commonwealth can probably only ever aspire to faint praise. In an alrea
  
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• Brexit details taking too long to agree, warns City chief

  19-04-2018 19:00 via ft.com
  Call to look at fallback options owing to ‘hard boiled attitudes’ in EU
  
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• Brexit details taking too long to agree, insurance chief warns

  19-04-2018 19:00 via ft.com
  Association of British Insurers urges UK government to look at fallback options
  
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• Brexit Briefing: The Customs Union Just Won't Die

  19-04-2018 18:43
  After a break for Easter, the Brexit Briefing is back!You can sign up for this briefing by clicking here, and you’ll receive it straight to your inbox every Thursday afternoon.If you like what you read, make sure you subscribe to our Commons People podcast here for even more analysis about what goes on in Westminster. 1) The Customs Union Is Harder To Kill Than James BondTheresa May suffered a major Parliamentary defeat over Brexit on Wednesday, after the House of
  
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• The Hans Asperger Revelations Shouldn't Stop You From Hiding That Part Of Your Identity

  19-04-2018 18:42
  The news that Hans Asperger, after whom Asperger syndrome was named, was an active participant in the Nazi regime will come as a shock to everyone in the autism community - but it is especially shocking to someone like me. I was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome in 2009, and to discover that a fundamental part of my identity is named after a man who sent children off to euthanasia camps because they were “a burden to their mother” is not something I will come to terms with in just a d
  
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• The Hans Asperger Revelations Shouldn't Make You Hide Your Identity

  19-04-2018 18:42
  The news that Hans Asperger, after whom Asperger syndrome was named, was an active participant in the Nazi regime will come as a shock to everyone in the autism community - but it is especially shocking to someone like me. I was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome in 2009, and to discover that a fundamental part of my identity is named after a man who sent children off to euthanasia camps because they were “a burden to their mother” is not something I will come to terms with in just a d
  
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• A second Brexit referendum would tear Britain apart

  19-04-2018 18:42 via ft.com
  The UK electorate is split down the middle, but another vote would make things worse
  
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• Firms should pay for people's data, says Vince Cable

  19-04-2018 18:36 via bbc.co.uk
  Lib Dem Leader Vince Cable says data is the "new oil" yet people were giving it away free.
  
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• Vince Cable calls for big internet companies to be broken up - Politics live

  19-04-2018 18:35
  Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happenGove’s claim UK is ‘most immigration-friendly country in EU’ - AnalysisLunchtime summary 5.29pm BST [Jowell] has thrown herself into the campaign for people to live longer lives with cancer with exactly the same relentlessly optimistic and total bloody doggedness as she did the Olympics. When faced with this woman who walks through walls and never gives up and always gets what she wants, you could almost f
  
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• Russian billionaire’s superyacht given to former wife in divorce case

  19-04-2018 18:24 via ft.com
  High Court orders transfer of Farkhad Akhmedov’s £350m yacht
  
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• Russian billionaire’s superyacht given to ex-wife in divorce case

  19-04-2018 18:24 via ft.com
  High Court orders transfer of Farkhad Akhmedov’s £350m yacht
  
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• Tessa Jowell hailed as an inspiration during MPs' cancer debate

  19-04-2018 18:21
  Former Labour minister who has brain tumour visits parliament to campaign for cancer treatmentTessa Jowell, the former Labour minister who helped bring the Olympics to London, has been praised by MPs across the parties as an inspiration. Before the debate began the Speaker, John Bercow, welcomed Jowell and her family to the gallery in a highly unusual intervention. Continue reading...
  
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• Ruth Davidson named on Time magazine influential people list

  19-04-2018 18:13 via bbc.co.uk
  The Scottish Conservative leader makes the Time magazine list of the world's most influential people.
  
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• Brexit: Senior MPs to force customs union vote

  19-04-2018 18:13 via bbc.co.uk
  A cross-party group of MPs aims to increase pressure for a Brexit customs union deal.
  
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• HMRC accused of blocking probe into Tory donor Lycamobile

  19-04-2018 18:09 via ft.com
  Taxman rejects French request to raid telecoms group on money-laundering claims
  
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• Shire takeover battle intensifies, as commodity prices boom – as it happened

  19-04-2018 18:07
  Brent crude hits its highest level since November 2014 7.10pm BST And finally, here’s Nick Fletcher on today’s action in the commodity market:Oil has hit a new three-and-a-half-year peak, and other commodity prices – notably nickel and aluminium – moved sharply higher as Donald Trump’s sanctions and the continuing conflict in Syria fuelled fears of supply shortages. Brent crude rose 1.7% to $74.74 (£52.67) a barrel on Thursday, the highest level since November
  
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• Labour campaign chief fears low youth turnout at local elections

  19-04-2018 18:02
  Andrew Gwynne warns young voters who backed Labour in general election ‘not to leave these matters to over-55s’
  Labour’s election campaign chief has expressed fears that Jeremy Corbyn’s army of young supporters may not turn out to vote in the local elections, meaning the party might fail to live up to high expectations.
  Andrew Gwynne, who is also the shadow communities secretary, said there was a danger that the young voters who backed in Labour at the general election wo
  
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• How Big Data Confirms, And Sometimes Confounds, Gender Stereotypes

  19-04-2018 17:54
  If you think you have problems on Tinder, spare a thought for Michael. Michael, 24, entered the New York dating scene with a bold flourish. He swiped right on every available singleton in the city - then waited. And waited. Just 0.6% of the city liked him back. Of those who did, subsequent analysis showed almost 90% were gay men. Michael did not get many dates.  Michael, of course, was a computer program. But unlike most such bots, he was not selling anything or stealing data - he was creat
  
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• We'll Take On This Life Together - Autism, My Son And Me

  19-04-2018 17:48
  Six years ago, I was a relatively new autism parent. To be honest, I still felt like a new parent, navigating my way around a world full of vomit, shit and soft play when Joseph’s diagnosis was handed to us like a shit sandwich.I have a friend who writes about the use of language and terminology when delivering news of a disability to parents. Some of us are half expecting an autism diagnosis by the time it’s finally delivered and it hardly comes as a shock, but it’s funny
  
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• Could This Checklist Help You Eat Meat More Sustainably?

  19-04-2018 17:45
  If you want to do your bit for the planet and animal kingdom, but you aren’t quite ready to go the whole hog and become a vegetarian, help is at hand. The Eat Better coalition - made up of more than 50 civil society groups including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace - has released eight principles, or a checklist if you will, to help you buy and consume meat more sustainably.From checking the packaging to supporting ethical producers, the guide will help your plate be more environme
  
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• How Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ Speech Directly Affected Me

  19-04-2018 17:44
  I was born in Uganda in 1971 at a time of incredible turbulence. General Idi Amin had taken over the country and was running Uganda like a private fiefdom. His politburo of a government introduced policies which openly stated ‘Africa for Africans’. Asians who had settled in the country were, in effect, isolated for not being ‘African’ – even though many had lived for decades in the country. The primary pull for Asians who had left India had been the colonial link wi
  
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• Old Footage Of Theresa May Demanding Labour Resignations Emerges Amid Windrush Scandal

  19-04-2018 17:43
  In 2004 Theresa May said "I find it extraordinary that a Minister isn’t willing just to step up to the plate and take responsibility... I’m actually sick and tired of Government Ministers who simply blame other people when something goes wrong".I agree. pic.twitter.com/zv2Dlx6Q8B— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) April 19, 2018Calls are intensifying for Theresa May to sack ministers over the Windrush scandal after old footage of the PM emerged in which she demanded resignations over L
  
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• Michael Gove: Brexit's not made UK less welcoming to immigrants

  19-04-2018 17:37 via bbc.co.uk
  But critics say the Windrush scandal has hit the UK's reputation with post-Brexit trading partners.
  
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• UK fraud office gets 50% boost to core funding

  19-04-2018 17:32 via ft.com
  Reliance on case-by-case ‘blockbuster’ funding for big financial cases cut
  
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• I'm Running The London Marathon For The Children Growing Up, Like Me, With An Alcoholic Parent

  19-04-2018 17:24
  We have a growing problem with addiction in society. It’s a problem which requires urgent attention.For too long addiction services have failed to provoke the attention at Westminster they deserve and in our communities they are neglected, too often dismantled. For example my research last year revealed vital alcohol and drug treatment programmes will have been cut by £43million this year, as part of wider cuts to public health budgets.But when we have a national public health crisis
  
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• Peter Kay's 'Car Share': New Series Finale And Improvised Episode Air Dates Revealed

  19-04-2018 17:20
  Peter Kay has announced when the all-new ‘Car Share’ series finale and improvised episode will air on BBC One, with the dates being posted on his official website. Fans don’t have long to wait, as the improvised episode will air on the next bank holiday, Monday 7 May at 10pm.The BBC will then screen both series of ‘Car Share’ on the subsequent Monday nights, before airing the new series finale on Monday 28 May, which is also a bank holiday.A handful of lucky fa
  
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• Foster denies RHI scheme was to benefit DUP voters

  19-04-2018 17:12 via bbc.co.uk
  The DUP leader denies the scheme was intended to benefit her party's supporters.
  
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• Conchita’s Ex Using Her HIV Status As A Threat Is Completely Unacceptable – But She’s Already Done So Much Good

  19-04-2018 17:10
  Right, first things first: I love Eurovision and I love, love, love Conchita Wurst.As someone living with HIV, I’m thrilled to welcome her into the HIV community and have no doubt that she’ll do brilliant things to challenge the stigma that still surrounds this virus. In fact, she already bloody has.But what I truly hate, despise and loathe is that her HIV status was used as a weapon against her and she was forced to reveal that she’s living with HIV by an ex. That shouldn&rsqu
  
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• This Robot Can Build An Ikea Chair Without Any Human Help

  19-04-2018 16:53
  Now we’re not saying that Ikea’s furniture is impossible to put together but we are definitely saying that it has become something of a rite of passage for everyone to have built an Ikea wardrobe at least once.Thankfully those days could be behind us as a team of scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore have created a robot that can assemble a piece of Ikea furniture completely on its own.And we do mean on its own, there was no human intervention or helping the rob
  
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• Business better off with Labour, says John McDonnell

  19-04-2018 16:34 via ft.com
  Shadow chancellor tells City audience that a hard Brexit is greater threat than higher taxes
  
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• Summer Sandals Shopping Guide For Under £50

  19-04-2018 16:32
  The sun is finally shining so it feels like the perfect time to change up our style and even get those feet out.Sandals in 2018 have somewhat evolved from what you would have worn to the beach aged six. Now we have strappy mules, fun heels or easy to wear woven flats. And everything shown below is under £50. You’re very welcome. Related...Your Sustainable Denim Shopping GuideYour Japanese Beauty Shopping GuideA Year Without Clothes Shopping
  
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• Fears For Poorer Disabled People As Benefits 'Pay For Cars But Not Phones'

  19-04-2018 16:21
  Disabled people can use benefits to get deals on adapted cars costing tens of thousands of pounds – but not special phones and computers worth hundreds, MPs have found.Many people claiming Personal Independence Payments (PIP) receive a dedicated “mobility” payment to lease cars worth up to £35,000, but can’t do the same for phones worth £700.The restriction has raised fears that disabled claimants on low incomes and without savings could be forced to take out
  
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• SNP met Cambridge Analytica before election

  19-04-2018 16:10 via bbc.co.uk
  Nicola Sturgeon says a consultant working for the party met the firm three months before the last Holyrood vote.
  
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