United Kingdom

    Remain supporters have crowd-funded £32,000 in legal fees to argue Ms May will need Parliament's backing before beginning formal negotiations to leave the EU. Theresa May’s timetable for negotiating Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union could be derailed by a High Court challenge in October. Pro-EU campaigners who claim the Prime Minister needs Parliament’s backing before starting formal talks have raised £32,000 towards their £50,000 initial legal costs from 840 people through crowd-funding. They are confident their “People’s Challenge” will go ahead. Ms May is expected early next year to trigger Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, which will start two years of Brexit negotiations. The Government has refused to promise MPs and peers a vote on the decision, fuelli...

    Terror plot foiled in its final few hours after spooks hack attackers phones and emails. In another case study the report tells how during the Afghan campaign a 50-strong team at GCHQ mounted a massive operation to help the SAS rescue Western hostages held by the Taliban. The spooks sifted through a mass of communications data to find details of the armed group which held the hostages and then hacked their phones and emails to gain insight into the group’s intent. The report goes on: This work enabled GCHQ to locate the group, monitor it and establish the group’s links with known terrorist networks. Within 72 hours of the kidnapping, the hostages had been located. Analysis of the content of the communications of the kidnappers, obtained through bulk interception, indicated...

    Rewind just a few weeks and Britons were flocking to beaches as the country basked in temperatures more familiar to those who live in the Mediterranean. But, as perhaps we have come to expect, the Great British summer has already come to an abrupt halt - with a 1,500-mile-wide storm due to hit the country on Friday night. A severe weather warning coming into effect at 7am on Saturday has been issued by the Met Office as unseasonably strong winds - gusting at up to 60mph - are expected to batter the coast. The sudden change in weather signals the start of an “early autumn”, experts claimed, with heavy, blustery showers expected and up to 20mm of rain falling in places. The weather will intensify on Saturday as temperatures drop to 11C overnight. The RAC warned of severe tra...

    Theresa May Politicians and campaigners will demand Theresa May vote against Saudi Arabia retaining the powerful chairmanship of the UN Human Rights Council after a year which saw the country's government savagely bomb Yemen, commit vast numbers of beheadings, a mass execution and detain activists. Their call, on World Humanitarian Day, comes ahead of a critical UN vote on whether Saudi Arabia remains in the post, which it has controversially held since this time last year. But despite the repeated and well publicised atrocities of the Middle Eastern state, ministers still refuse to say whether they will back the kingdom or not. It follows recently emerged details of the huge quantities of military aircraft, bombs and arms the UK is selling Saudi Arabia, some of which have...

    NHSBT Blood donation services around the world have launched an international push for more people to give blood amid falling numbers of new donors. NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT), the national blood service for England, is uniting with other blood donor organisations and calling on citizens in 21 countries across the world to become new blood donors and save lives. Globally, three blood transfusions are given every second, but there has been nearly a 30% drop internationally in people becoming blood donors compared to a decade ago. According to Ian Trenholm, chief executive of NHSBT: We’re particularly interested in encouraging more young people and those from black and South Asian communities to come forward to make sure we’ve got a broad range of blood types, he s...

    Hugh Grosvenor, the 25-year-old who inherited a £9 billion fortune last week on the death of the Duke of Westminster, will likely not pay any inheritance tax, according to The Guardian. Normally, large inheritances are subject to a 40% tax. But the vast Grosvenor property portfolio — including 300 acres of Mayfair and Belgravia in central London — will pass in the form of a trust, which is subject to a 6% tax payment every 10 years instead. To give you an idea of just how much tax the new Duke of Westminster isn't paying, consider that the entire take of the inheritance tax last year was £4.7 billion. Had Grosvenor been taxed at the 40% rate, it would have put £3.6 billion in the public coffers. Those of us who pay between 20% and 40% income tax every month have another re...

    A lawsuit brought by a hairdresser, an investment firm manager and a handful of other plaintiffs that demands Parliament hold a vote on whether to trigger Article 50 will be heard by the UK Supreme Court, according to Bloomberg. The case is crucial because it sets out a legal path that could allow the House of Commons to ignore the result of the EU referendum. The plaintiffs argue that an Article 50 request to leave the EU can only be triggered by a vote in Parliament, not the mere request of the prime minister. If the Supreme Court agrees, then the Article 50 request would be put to the House of Commons. It is not certain that Article 50 would get enough votes. As this chart from Morgan Stanley show, a large majority of MPs favour Remain. Many of them are likely to vote a...

    The major grocers’ revenues dropped by 3.1pc to £99bn in the last quarter, according to the latest figures from the Share Centre. Sales across the whole of the FTSE 350 also fell by 2.2pc to £341.7bn in the last three months. However, while British companies sales are falling, it is expected that the slump in the pound will improve profits as around 40pc of British listed companies’ sales are declared in US dollars. Companies with large overseas operations and exporters such as Vodafone, SAB Miller and Kingfisher will also benefit from sterling’s depreciation. British company profits are also on the rise as a wave of multi-billion writedowns come to an end. Food retailers are fighting against deflation Around £89.7bn was written down in the last quarter, the lowest level s...

    The Government has perviously said it would not trigger Article 50 before the end of the year Ministers are reportedly in discussions over a delay in triggering Article 50, the formal process of leaving the European Union, which could see Britain remain a member of the bloc until late 2019. Theresa May, who is expected by many to trigger the two-year process of leaving the EU in early 2017, could push back the timetable because her new Brexit and international trade departments will not be ready, sources in the City of London have told The Sunday Times. Elections on the continent, including those in France and Germany, could also delay Article 50 of the Libson Treaty being triggered. “Ministers are now thinking the trigger could be delayed to autumn 2017,” a source who has...

    Liam Fox and Boris Johnson are locked in a bitter Whitehall feud over who controls key parts of Britain's foreign policy, a leaked letter seen by The Telegraph reveals. Just weeks after the two men joined the Government, Dr Fox sent Mr Johnson the terse letter, which he copied to Theresa May, effectively demanding that the Foreign Office be broken up. Dr Fox, suggested that British trade with other countries would not "flourish" if responsibility for future policy remained with the Foreign Office. He also listed a series of economic statistics which called into question the Foreign Office's ability to boost Britain's economic ties with other countries and suggested that Mr Johnson focused instead on "diplomacy and security" including overseeing MI6 and GCHQ. The Foreign Se...