Author: LoveWorld UK

Rail passengers around Great Britain are facing another day of disruption as train staff in the RMT union begin a 24-hour strike. The strike on Thursday is the first of three in 10 days by RMT members, with two further stoppages on 22 and 29 July, and is taking place during a week-long overtime ban by train drivers in the Aslef union. About 20,000 RMT members at 14 train operators contracted by the Department for Transport in England will be involved in the strike. The stoppage is expected to add to a disrupted peak summer holiday getaway weekend. The strikes…

Former President Donald Trump said that he received a letter on July 17 informing him that he is a target of the special counsel investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. Mr. Trump said the Sunday letter from special counsel Jack Smith gave him four days to report to a grand jury. In a message posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, on July 18, the former president suggested that the short deadline may mean he would be arrested and indicted. Mr. Trump called the letter “HORRIFYING NEWS for our country” and framed it with the backdrop of the two other…

Louisiana will ban certain transgender procedures on people under the age of 18 after lawmakers overturned the governor’s veto of the bill. The Stop Harming Our Kids Act, also known as HB 648 (pdf), was passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature along party lines in early June, but Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, had vetoed the bill. State lawmakers overturned Mr. Edwards’ veto of the bill at a special override session on Tuesday, which means the measure is now slated to take effect on Jan. 1, 2024. The new law will bar healthcare professionals from providing transgender procedures to minors, such as hormone…

Tottenham are set to sign the England Under-19 international Ashley Phillips after triggering the £3m release clause in his contract at Blackburn. The 18-year-old centre-back signed a three-year contract with Blackburn last summer and won the Championship apprentice of the year award last season, during which he made 14 appearances across all competitions. Spurs were interested in Phillips last summer and Ange Postecoglou remains keen to add at least one senior centre-back, with Bayer Leverkusen’s Edmond Tapsoba and Wolfsburg’s Micky van de Ven of interest. Phillips is scheduled to undergo a medical over the next 24 hours and could then fly to…

Pesticide companies Bayer and Syngenta have been excoriated in a European parliament hearing after failing to disclose studies on the brain toxicity of their products. European regulators said the companies had “breached legal obligations” and behaved “unethically”. MEPs questioning executives from the companies said their actions had been “outrageous” and represented a “scandal”. The companies rejected the accusations and said they had provided all “relevant” studies. The withholding of nine brain toxicity studies from European regulators over the last 20 years was revealed by the Guardian in June, reporting findings from Swedish academics. They discovered that these toxicity studies had been submitted…

Tata Group, the owner of Jaguar Land Rover, has announced it will invest £4bn to build an electric car battery gigafactory in the UK, in a major boost to the British automotive industry. The factory is expected to be sited in Somerset and to bring 4,000 new jobs to the area. It will become one of Europe’s largest battery cell manufacturing sites when it starts production in 2026, said Tata Sons, the holding company behind the Indian conglomerate. Tata had been locked in negotiations for nine months to secure state aid for the project, which would aim to produce 40 gigawatt hours (GWh)…

Keir Starmer’s decision not to scrap the two-child benefit cap if Labour wins power has exposed deep splits within the party, as he faces mounting calls to rethink the policy. Facing the prospect of a battle at this week’s national policy forum (NPF) over the controversial decision, shadow cabinet ministers were sent out to defend his position. They argued that if Labour wanted to appear fiscally credible at the next election, it could not make any spending commitments without saying how they would be funded. But at a bad-tempered meeting of the parliamentary Labour party on Monday, almost every question to the…

House Republicans sent a letter demanding Meta answer if policies on its new Twitter-style platform, Threads, violates free speech. The letter, which was obtained exclusively by CNBC, is a hint that Meta’s latest product could bring it further scrutiny in Congress. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on July 17 to send over documents about Threads’s content moderation practices by the end of July. Zuckerberg launched Threads earlier this month as an alternative to Twitter, which has received partisan pushback following owner Elon Musk’s release of internal files that revealed censorship of Americans at the direction of elements within…

Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang has disappeared from public view for more than three weeks, sparking intense speculation and media attention. Mr. Qin’s last public appearance was on June 25 in Beijing, when he met with the foreign ministers of Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Russia. Since then, Mr. Qin, 57, has been absent from a series of important diplomatic activities. His lunch meeting with the ambassadors of EU countries to China in late June was temporarily canceled; then, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell’s scheduled China visit from July 7 to July 10 to…

Bricklayers, plasterers and other construction jobs have been added to the government’s “shortage occupation list”, making it easier for foreign builders to come to Britain amid labour shortages partly caused by Brexit. The UK government has relaxed visa restrictions for a number of sectors that face severe worker shortages, and has added bricklayers and masons; roofers, roof tilers and slaters; carpenters and joiners; plasterers and other construction workers to the list. Fishing jobs have also been added to the list. The Home Office said that this would “aid the delivery of key national infrastructure and stimulate growth for related industries”. Those…