Author: LoveWorld UK

Heathrow failed to meet the minimum accessibility standards for disabled passengers in the year to March, the sector’s regulator has said. The airport was the only one in the UK to be rated as “poor” and “needs improvement” by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) over all four quarters in the period, according to the report. For the 12 months covered, 18 airports received good or very good ratings and seven airports improved from poor to good. Heathrow was an outlier, however, not having met the criteria for a good rating over the period. “Last year we didn’t consistently deliver an…

A record number of on-the-spot fines were issued by councils for what have been dubbed “busybody offences”, with many cracking down on activities such as feeding birds, swearing and napping in public. The seemingly bizarre nature of some of the fines issued under Public Spaces Protection Order legislation has seen them increase to 13,433 in 2022, up from 10,412 in 2019. More than 150 councils issued at least one penalty in 2022, according to a report. Offences for which people were fined included shouting, which had been banned by four councils, and making noise, which was also banned by four…

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…