News – World and UK

John Lewis has said it will bring back its ‘never knowingly undersold’ price pledge in a major U-turn, two years after ditching the commitment over concerns it what less relevant to shoppers. The department store chain will bring back the price promise – which began in 1925 – from September 9, in an effort to boost its value perception among customers. The refreshed commitment will see the retailer use AI […]

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has discontinued its indecent assault case against Harvey Weinstein, saying “there is no longer a realistic prospect of conviction”. The 72-year-old former Hollywood film producer was facing two criminal charges of alleged indecent assault against a woman, who is now aged in her 50s, in London in 1996. On Thursday, Frank Ferguson, head of the CPS special crime and counter-terrorism division, said: “Following a review […]

President Emmanuel Macron has named EU former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier as France’s new prime minister. The announcement came on Thursday after more than 50 days of caretaker government. The appointment of the 73-year-old Barnier follows weeks of intense efforts by Macron and his aides to find a candidate who might be able to build loose groupings of backers in parliament and survive possible attempts by Mr Macron’s opponents to […]

The Government must urgently increase investment in higher education as British universities “are all feeling the crunch”, an education chief has said. Dame Sally Mapstone, president of Universities UK (UUK), which represents 141 higher education institutions, said universities “stand at a fork in the road” and the system could “slide into decline” without urgent action. Addressing hundreds of vice-chancellors at the UUK’s conference, Dame Sally said the organisation’s blueprint – […]

Construction of the UK’s longest railway bridge has been completed on the outskirts of north-west London. HS2 engineers installed the final deck segment of the 2.1-mile Colne Valley Viaduct on Thursday. Around 200 contractors who worked on the project gathered at the site to celebrate the milestone. The gently curved bridge will carry high-speed trains up to 10 metres above land and water across the Colne Valley between the M25 […]

Jeremy Kyle is expected to give evidence at an inquest into the death of a man who died after appearing on his TV show. Steve Dymond, 63, from Portsmouth, Hampshire, is believed to have killed himself seven days after filming for the Jeremy Kyle Show in May 2019. He had taken a lie detector test for the programme after being accused of cheating on his partner, Jane Callaghan, from Gosport, […]

Dedicated surgical hubs deliver more operations such as hip replacements and cataract removal in a shorter time and could be key to driving down NHS waiting lists, an evaluation has found. A new report from the Health Foundation charity found that surgical hubs, which are still being rolled out across the NHS, increase the number of operations that can be carried out while reducing the length of time patients spend in hospital. […]

Pupil suspensions and exclusions in England are predicted to have risen by more than a fifth in the past year, a report has found. The “alarming” numbers of children losing learning since the pandemic must be addressed, according to a paper by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think tank and education charity The Difference. The research explores an “exclusions continuum” to identify the formal ways children miss school […]

The TUC is calling for a workforce commission as part of an urgent drive to repair the country’s “broken” public services. The plan is to bring together unions, employers and independent experts to tackle challenges facing the NHS, schools and other parts of the public sector. TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said there was a crisis in hospitals, schools and other sectors after 14 years of underinvestment under the Conservatives. […]