United Kingdom

    Plastic five pound notes that can survive a soaking in liquid and will last longer than paper fivers are available in cash machines from today - but shoppers have been warned they may stick together. The historic move marks the gradual death of paper notes as the Bank of England phases in polymer cash. Modern £5 notes featuring wartime Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill will be available at hole-in-the-wall machines in major cities and over the counter at many banks from 9am today. Armoured vehicles have delivered about £2billion worth of plastic £5 notes from the central bank’s cash centres in Debden, Essex, and Leeds to more than 30 top secret, high-security vaults across the country. The first batch of 440 million new fivers – which are 15% smaller than the existing o...

    Former UK Prime Minister David Cameron is to stand down as a Conservative MP, two months after resigning in the wake of Britain's vote to leave the European Union. Cameron, who came to power in 2010, said he had told Prime Minister Theresa May of his decision to stop representing his constituency in Oxfordshire to make way for someone who could concentrate on the area in central England. "I've thought about this long and hard over the summer and I've decided the right thing to do is to stand down as the member of parliament for Witney," he told BBC TV. "In my view with modern politics, with the circumstances of my resignation, it isn't really possible to be a proper back bench MP (lawmaker) as a former prime minister. I think everything you do will become a big distraction...

    Delta Airlines sent Mo Farah to the back of the queue as he waited to board his flight home from Rio, refusing to acknowledge he had a business-class ticket, his wife Tania claims. In an interview the Olympic champion's spouse alleged that her husband was treated like a "piece of s***" as the only black person waiting to board his flight home last month. She said: "This woman basically humiliated him, until people came forward and said: ‘That’s Mo Farah, the Olympic champion.' "She was mortified afterwards, but had basically yelled at him like he was a piece of s*** to get back into line. "He was the only black person [in the queue] and hadn’t done anything to warrant it. I just knew she had a problem with him." Witnesses later claimed Mrs Farah swore at the airline worker...

    The man running the Nordic region’s biggest bank says the European Union needs to brace itself for the possibility that it will take up to half a decade before Britain can extract itself from the bloc. Speaking in an interview with Finnish broadcaster YLE TV1 on Saturday, Nordea Bank AB Chief Executive Officer Casper von Koskull said the Brexit process that has rocked the EU is still plagued by “a lot of uncertainties.” “I think this came as a bit of a surprise for the Brits themselves,” von Koskull said. “Now it may well be that this will be a process that lasts three, four or five years.” Because there’s still no clear roadmap for how to proceed, “it may be that the Brexit process will not be started until after two years,” he said. “And then it will take many years to f...

    Keith Vaz's wife has opened up about her devastation following sordid revelations that her husband had paid male prostitutes for sex. Maria Fernandes said that despite her initial shock, she forgives her husband of 23 years for cheating on her. The wife of the Labour MP, said that the reports of her husband's infidelities had come "out of the blue" and she had considered leaving him. However, the 57-year-old said that she has decided to give him a second chance to save her marriage. The devoted wife added that she still loves her husband, but said he "needs to change or he'll be slung out". In a candid interview with the Mail on Sunday, Maria described her shock when he first told her that he was about to be exposed in a sex scandal. "He said something was going to break [...

    Andrew Tyrie, the Liaison Committee’s Tory chairman, believes the leak is among the most serious and disruptive Westminster has seen. MPs and parliamentary staff face the prospect of an extraordinary trawl of their emails by private investigators, as anger grows over a leak of a report into Britain’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The Independent has learnt that a Commons committee is poised to debate taking the unprecedented step and that its chairman believes a demand for a probe must be taken seriously.The move would be a backlash against the BBC’s Newsnight being handed extensive details about a forthcoming report into whether weapons sales to the Saudis should be banned. The leak revealed a draft report by the parliamentary committee charged with scrutinising arms export...

    Britain’s exit from the European Union will create difficulties for the European Investment Bank (EIB), a lender owned by EU governments, the bank’s president Werner Hoyer said on Saturday. The EIB is also a central tool for an investment programme the European Commission estimated would generate 315 billion euros ($354 billion) of investment in the EU and which is set to be expanded. When asked what will happen to the EIB when Britain, which is one of its major shareholders, leaves the EU, Hoyer told reporters in Bratislava: The United Kingdom is a big and important shareholder of the European Investment Bank and an important member state of the European Union. This is why it will be a difficult process, Hoyer said on entering a meeting of EU finance ministers. We will ha...

    Your piggy bank may be a lot more valuable than you first thought. Earlier this year, a 2p coin sold for almost £1,400 at auction because it was silver instead of copper. So far only two have been found, but there could be more in circulation waiting to be sold for a small fortune. The coins are made when a blank 10p piece accidentally ends up being pressed using a 2p mint, according to This is Money. While you’ll need to be very lucky to find another, there are various common coins worth a lot more than their face value. About 210,000 ‘Pagoda’ 50p coins are in circulation in the UK, with each typically being sold for around £30-50 on eBay. The coins can be identified by the image on the ‘tails’ side of the iconic Kew Gardens Pagoda. But with almost 950 million regular 50p...

    Theresa May has told Conservative backbenchers she supports lifting the ban on grammar schools so every child can have access to opportunity. Two MPs who attended a meeting of the 1922 Committee on Wednesday night confirmed to Sky News that the Prime Minister argued for an overhaul of England's school system. She told the gathering of backbench MPs that the best state schools have become the preserve of Britain's elite, effectively shutting out the majority of children from the best education. The sources confirmed she said, to cheers in the room: "We already have selection, haven't we? It's called selection by house price." It is thought many of the free schools announced by her predecessor David Cameron could become grammar schools under the changes. The Government's sup...

    Under plans being considered by Prime Minister Theresa May, EU migrants may be banned from the UK if they do not have a job. After saying that an Australian-style points system would fail to curb immigration levels in the UK earlier on Monday (5 September), the British prime minister is said to be looking at a work permit system whereby EU migrants cannot come to the country to look for work. But the points system that was touted during the EU referendum campaign could be "open to abuse" and would entitle migrants to "automatically" enter Britain if they had enough points, she said. "What the British people voted for on the 23rd of June was to bring some control into the movement of people from the European Union to the UK. A points-based system does not give you that cont...