Month: October 2024

Britain should apologise and “think about” paying reparations for its historical involvement in the slave trade, the mother of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence has said. Speaking in Parliament, Doreen Lawrence argued it was a contemporary issue given taxes had been used to help compensate slave owners up until 2015. The Jamaican-born Labour peer made her comments after the UK failed to keep language on reparations out of a joint […]

A spy-accused former soldier thought British security services would be “impressed” with him after he covertly gathered the names of special forces personnel, his trial has heard. Daniel Khalife, 23, told a court he was “surprised” when he discovered a “flaw” in an internal HR system for booking leave, allowing him to find further details about the soldiers on a promotions list in 2021. He took a photo of a […]

Astronomers have unveiled an image of a giant cloud of space gas and dust that creates the illusion of a wolf-like silhouette against a colourful cosmic backdrop. Nicknamed the Dark Wolf Nebula, the cloud is in the Scorpius constellation near the middle of the Milky Way, around 5,300 light-years from Earth. This image takes up an area in the sky equivalent to four full moons, but is actually part of […]

Farmers will have to stump up hundreds of thousands of pounds under Labour’s inheritance tax plans, the Conservative Party has claimed. Shadow business secretary Kevin Hollinrake warned Labour MPs who intend to have a pint in a local pub and a chat with farmers this weekend to “think again” following yesterday’s Budget. Greg Smith, Conservative MP for Mid Buckinghamshire, also described the Budget as a “full-frontal financial attack on our […]

Chinese online retailer Temu is facing a European Union investigation over suspicions it is failing to prevent the sale of illegal products, the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm has said. The European Commission opened its investigation five months after adding Temu to the list of “very large online platforms” needing the strictest level of scrutiny under the bloc’s Digital Services Act. It is a wide-ranging rulebook designed to clean up online […]

A rise in the number of people sleeping rough in London by almost a fifth on the same period last year has been described as “shameful”. A total of 4,780 rough sleepers were seen on the capital’s streets between July and September, according to the latest Combined Homelessness and Information Network (Chain) statistics which described it as a record level. This is an increase of 18% from 4,068 people in […]

The ballot of Conservative Party members closes at 5pm today Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick’s race to replace Rishi Sunak as Conservative leader is nearing its end, with the member ballot closing on Thursday. One contender has declared the contest “close” just hours ahead of the contest’s 5pm ballot deadline. The winner of the race will be announced on Saturday, almost four months after the general election defeat that triggered […]

The zones in England and Wales come into force today Silent prayer will not be automatically banned in new protected zones around abortion clinics in England and Wales coming into force on Thursday. Instances will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, with police and prosecutors deciding around the intent or recklessness of the person involved. Pro-choice campaigners had called for a total ban on silent prayer within the zones, arguing a […]

The death toll could rise as search efforts continue with an unknown number of people still missing. Survivors of the worst natural disaster to hit Spain this century awoke to scenes of devastation on Thursday after villages were wiped out by monstrous flash floods that claimed at least 95 lives. The death toll could rise as search efforts continue with an unknown number of people still missing. The aftermath looked eerily similar […]