United Kingdom

    Pressure is mounting on Theresa May despite seeing off a threatened rebellion over her flagship Brexit bill with the last-minute promise of concessions. On Tuesday, the Prime Minister saw off a move by MPs to secure a meaningful vote on the eventual deal with the EU, however reports suggest no concessions have actually been agreed. That leaves open the prospect of leaving what is believed to be between 15 and 20 Tory rebels disappointed, which could cause significant problems for Mrs May further down the line. The PM still faces a gruelling bout of parliamentary ping-pong with the Lords as the Bill bounces back and forth between the two Houses over the coming weeks. A statement issued after the vote by the Department for Exiting the European Union struck a defiant...

    Images of the Duchess of Sussex flipping burgers in hotpants and a crop top will be used as evidence in a court appeal over the Duchess of Cambridge's topless photo settlement. The appeal in Paris concerns photos of Kate and Prince William on holiday in the south of France which were published in French Closer and La Provence magazines in September 2012. MSN has launched a campaign to tackle loneliness, which affects 9 million across all age groups and walks of life in the UK. Discover more on this 'silent epidemic': Please donate now They were snapped with a zoom lens as they relaxed outside at a chateau belonging to the Queen's nephew, Viscount Linley. Closer Magazine was ordered to pay €100,000 (£92,000) in damages to Kate and William over the breach of privacy...

    Nine million people across all age groups and walks of life in Britain are affected by loneliness. We've partnered with three charities - Mind, the Campaign to End Loneliness and Wavelength - to tackle this debilitating and complex issue. You can help make a difference - please donate now. MSN is working with Benevity, a secure international payments processing service, to ensure protected collection of donations and the safe distribution of monies raised directly to the charities. Have we forgotten how to make friends? This was the question a new UK survey was centred around, with the aim of finding out how often we make new connections during adulthood. The organisation, Campaign to End Loneliness, teamed up with YouGov to carry out the research, which had some sa...

    A Conservative minister has quit his job over the way Theresa May is delivering Brexit, in a blow for the government ahead of critical votes in the House of Commons. Dr Phillip Lee MP has quit his job on the frontbench over Brexit. Dr Phillip Lee said the move was due to his intention to back a plan giving parliament power to direct Ms May’s approach, something the prime minister is determined to avoid. He also went directly against official policy in saying that the government should go to the people, once again for a decision on the final Brexit deal. The ex-justice minister said he is incredibly sad to be leaving his job, but argued that he could better speak up for his constituents on EU withdrawal once off the government payroll. Despite demands for unity fro...

    A grandmother who escaped Grenfell Tower said firefighters at the blaze were betrayed by their superiors, urging brigades to abandon stay-put advice until buildings are made safe. Rukayetu Mamudu, who recently turned 70, and her grandson Tyrshondre, then 12, were some of the first survivors to escape the fire in the early hours of June 14. Mrs Mamudu said firefighters passed their betrayal on to the 71 people that died that night but they should not feel guilty as they were let down by the system. She told the Press Association: You cannot now advise people ‘go back and stay in your flat’ because you don’t know what the building is made of. That is exactly what happened in this scenario. People were trusting the firefighters words. And the firefighters relied on ...

    Immigrants have been treated as commodities during deportation flights from the UK, according to a damning assessment of charter flights used by the Home Office to facilitate enforced removals. Returnees have been penned for hours in coaches with inadequate sanitation and subject to excessive and ill-judged use of restraint, the prisons watchdog said. The report, by the Independent Monitoring Board Charter Flight Monitoring Team (CFMT), reveals that deportation flights have departed from Britain with as many as three staff for every foreign national on board. On one journey to Germany in June last year, there were 90 escorting officers for 30 individuals and all detainees were put in restraints in what the watchdog blasted as inhumane. The charter to Germany was a...

    Boris Johnson has given his backing to plans for a £15 billion bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Foreign Secretary said the idea should be seriously considered by the government after retweeting a proposal for the ambitious project. The DUP, whose 10 MPs prop up Theresa May's government, have previously backed the plan. The Northern Irelandish party demanded a feasibility study into building a bridge or tunnel in its manifesto for the 2015 general election but it did not feature in its manifesto last year. It is not the first Brexit bridge bumbling Boris has backed. In February he spoke out in favour of a bridge across the channel linking the UK with France as an alternative to the tunnel. The idea was ruled out in the 1980s but Mr Johnson insists...

    Theresa May has vowed that Britain will continue to work for international agreement on issues like trade and security, following a G7 summit at which Donald Trump clashed with America’s traditional allies. In a statement to the House of Commons, Mrs May made clear that the UK intends to honour the commitments it signed up to at the meeting in Canada, even after the US president dramatically repudiated them in an end-of-summit tweet. She left no doubt that EU nations will impose counter-measures on US goods in response, but cautioned against tit-for-tat retaliation which might lead to a trade war. This was a difficult summit, with at times some very candid discussions, Mrs May told MPs. But the conclusion I draw is that it is only through continued dialogue that we...

    The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will follow in the footsteps of Harry's parents, Charles and Diana, whose first royal tour as a married couple was also to Australia and New Zealand. The couple are set to visit locations across Australia, Fiji, the Kingdom of Tonga and New Zealand. This will be the first overseas tour for the newlyweds, set to take place in the northern autumn of 2018 and coinciding with the fourth Invictus Games which are slated to be held in Sydney in late October. The Games are part of Harry and Meghan's romantic history, as the couple were famously pictured during their first public appearance together at the Invictus Trials in Toronto in 2017. Harry and Meghan have been invited to Australia and New Zealand by the countries' respective governmen...

    The 33-year-old mum-of-three, who is one of Britain’s most high-profile Muslims having won the BBC’s Great British Bake-Off series in 2015, says her kids are confused by the hostility towards their religion in the UK. Nadiya said My kids say Mummy, do people not like Muslims? I claim to be British at the same time so I get abuse from every angle. I’m never a good enough Muslim. I’m not a good enough Brit. I’m not a good enough Bangladeshi. I think three years ago I would have just sat there and taken it, not now, I’ll say something. She tells Twitter followers about her religion and defends and explains Muslim practices to them in an attempt to make those who troll her more enlightened. She observes Ramadan and fasts but says her three children, aged 7 to 11, a...