Author: News Desk

UK snow map: Where and when heavy snow, rain and flooding will hit the strongest A number of weather warnings are in place for parts of the UK on Friday, as more snow is forecast to fall across the country and flooding is expected. The Met Office has issued five yellow weather warnings for snow and ice following a days of wintry conditions across the country weather. A snow and ice warning has been issued from midday on Wednesday to 10am on Friday marning, covering northern Scotland. A warning for ice is in place from 4pm on Thursday until 10am…

Peer suspended from House of Lords for launching tirade at parliament security staff A former Marks and Spencer boss has been suspended from the House of Lords for six months after he was found to have launched a tirade of abuse at members of parliamentary staff. The lengthy suspension was handed down to Lord Stone of Blackheath after he was found to have been rude and aggressive, with the decision noting he poses a “continuing risk to those on the parliamentary estate”. The incident showed the “clear pattern” of the non-affiliated peer’s poor behaviour continued, according to the House of…

Bitcoin miner refused access to landfill site to retrieve £598m hard drive, judge rules A man’s bid to sue a council over his attempts to excavate a rubbish tip to find a Bitcoin hard drive worth nearly £600m has had his case thrown out of court by a judge. James Howells says his former partner had mistakenly dumped the hard drive in 2013, only for it to increase in value over the last year to be now worth an estimated £598m. While the landfill in Newport in Wales holds more than 1.4 million tonnes of waste, Mr Howells said he…

Warning food prices could soar by 20% as pressure mounts on Reeves over flailing economy Rachel Reeves has been hit by a triple whammy of setbacks that appear to have shattered Labour’s dreams of boosting Britain’s economic growth. With the chancellor set to fly to China on Friday, the pound fell amid fears of surging borrowing costs and future tax rises – and a shocking new report seen by The Independent suggested that the price of food and household staples could rise by 20 per cent. The Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS) revealed that massive problems with supply…

Religion, police and education leaders unite with grooming survivors to demand immediate government action Police chiefs, head teachers, faith groups and charities are among groups urging the government to implement recommendations from the child sex abuse inquiry as the row over grooming gangs continues. A coalition, made up of 65 major charities, community leaders and abuse survivors, says it has “significant concerns” about the government’s failure to act on proposals made by the chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in 2022. The inquiry is back in the limelight after the Tory party backed calls from tech…

Liz Truss lays into Rachel Reeves over economy and trip to China Rachel Reeves has been blamed by Liz Truss for a dramatic drop in the value of the pound which has sparked fears of a new recession. The former prime minister accused the chancellor of pushing Britain “to the brink of economic crisis”. The scathing attack came as both Tory and Lib Dem MPs called on Ms Reeves to scrap a planned trip to China this weekend in which she is to seek closer economic ties to Beijing to revive Britain’s struggling growth. The intervention by Ms Truss marks…

Lammy declares ‘Trump is right’ on defence spending as he warns post-Cold War peace is over David Lammy has declared that the hard-won “post-Cold War peace is well and truly over” as he used his first major speech of 2025 to take aim at Vladimir Putin and Russian aggression. The foreign secretary threw his weight behind demands by Donald Trump that Nato allies significantly increase their spending on defence, while laughing off the president-elect’s expansionist plans for Greenland and Canada. Mr Trump demanded earlier this week that Nato allies commit 5 per cent of GDP to defence spending. While Mr…

Meta oversight board members say losing fact-checking could undermine public trust Two members of Meta’s independent Oversight Board have warned that misinformation will “undermine public trust”, after the social media giant announced it is planning to ditch fact-checkers. Alan Rusbridger, Independent collumnist and former editor of The Guardian, and novelist Khaled Mansour have stressed that the impact on the credibility of sites such as Facebook could be “exorbitant” and could lead to wide civil disturbance. Their comments come after Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta is to scrap its longstanding fact-checking programme in favour of a community notes system similar to…

Following the fall of dictator Bashar Assad, there is uncertainty over the future of Russia’s military bases in Syria. The naval base in Tartus and the airbase in Hmeimim are Russia’s only military outposts outside the former Soviet Union and have played a key role in the Kremlin’s activities in Africa and the Middle East. Losing the military bases in Syria would be devastating for Russia’s Africa Corps (former Wagner Group) that are present in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Central African Republic and in Libya, said Beverly Ochieng, a security analyst at the risk consultancy Control Risks in Senegal. “We…

Bengali-speaking Indians caught up in immigration clampdown Taslima Noor, 34, told DW that she has not slept for days since police in India’s capital, New Delhi, intensified their drive to detain Bangladeshis who they claim are in the country illegally. “I have been working here for seven years, and I am fearful that the authorities will create trouble for my family,” said Noor, who is a domestic worker. Noor is from a Bengali-speaking region of Cooch Behar in the Indian state of West Bengal, near the border with Bangladesh. Since the beginning of the year, nine Bangladeshis have been deported…