All news for 2024-07-18

616
Five Just Stop Oil activists receive record sentences for planning to block M25
Campaigners receive longest ever sentences for non-violent protest after being convicted of conspiracy to cause public nuisance
403
UK house purchases delayed due to issues with Chaps payments system
Bank of England said issue affected some payments on Thursday but that service had been restored by 4.30pm
534
Keir Starmer says he is open to processing asylum seekers offshore
PM wants to rethink UK’s immigration policies but did not make progress on returns deal at summit with EU leaders
408
German comedian loses job over Trump shooting joke
Sebastian Hotz, aka El Hotzo, was dropped from his radio show and provoked anger from Elon Musk after now-deleted posts on X
492
Ursula von der Leyen wins second term as European Commission president
Mainstream groups unite to grant her an emphatic victory and defeat anti-EU and extreme-right forces
477
Mysterious third person sought in ’gangland-style’ murder of British men in Sweden
A third person is being hunted by police in connection with the killing of two British men believed to have been executed in Sweden.
642
Kate Middleton issues new statement and hails ’powerful’ support amid cancer recovery
The Princess of Wales has taken to Instagram, where she posted a statement expressing her support for a cause close to her heart and a place she has visited in the past
570
US hits accountants tied to cartel fraud scheme
The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Tuesday three Mexican accountants implicated in a timeshare fraud scheme run by one of Mexico’s most violent drug cartels.
411
Woman who killed neighbour’s little girl, 11, with bedbug poison gas spared prison
A judge found that Akter’s decision to import the poison gas from Italy on a passenger flight could have caused a "catastrophic mid-air incident and put hundreds of lives at risk"
684
Small clue leads to the downfall of £2,500,000 cannabis empire
A man has been jailed after his DNA was matched to a blood stain at a storage container where £2.5million worth of cannabis was stored.
714
Meta pulls plug on release of advanced AI model in EU
‘Unpredictable’ privacy regulations prompt Facebook owner to scrap regional plans for multimodal Llama
569
Italian journalist ordered to pay €5,000 in damages for Giorgia Meloni height insult
Giulia Cortese convicted of defamation over two tweets that judge in Milan said amounted to ‘body shaming’
605
One person dies in Channel crossing attempt near Gravelines
French and British coastguards rescued a further 71 people who had tried to cross in an overcrowded dinghy on Wednesday
560
Hancock and Hunt failed to prepare UK for pandemic, Covid inquiry finds
Health secretaries failed to fix flaws in contingency planning before Covid killed more than 230,000 in UK, report says
392
Exact number of prisoners to be freed early revealed as jails runs out of cells
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood gave details of the early release scheme for prisoners as she confirmed how many offenders will be let out in a Commons statement
687
Tesco puts booze in high-tech cabinets dubbed ‘Freedom Cases’ with 4-step access process to stop shoplifters
The futuristic tech is yet another supermarket anti-shoplifting ploy
587
Marcus Rashford banned from driving after being caught speeding at 104mph in Rolls-Royce on motorway
Man Utd star claimed he feared he was being followed when undercover cop car clocked him
523
Santander outrage as customer loses local branch and hits deposit limit
He was unhappy with the bank’s response to his complaint
476
UK supermarkets recall burger buns over metal contamination fears
Brennans, Connell Bakery and Johnston Mooney and O’Brien products are being pulled from the shelves
452
Proposed UK-EU security pact ‘will be welcomed in Brussels’, MEP says
Glad to draw line under poisonous Brexit era, diplomats say Starmer’s new approach to EU brings ‘good vibes’