United Kingdom

fea     Britain's first new nuclear power station for a generation could be given the final go ahead today. The board of French energy firm EDF is meeting later and is expected to give investment approval for the completion of a new plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset. Hinkley Point C will power 5.8 million homes, create 25,000 jobs and cost £18bn to build. The power station was originally meant to open next year but that has now slipped to 2025. It will replace Hinkley Point B, which is due to be decomissioned next decade. He said: "The go-ahead is desperately needed on a number of grounds - to help keep the lights on in Britain in the decades ahead and as a fulcrum for the creation of thousands of jobs and related economic activity in the West Country." With many traditional p...

    A Welsh schoolgirl was starved, physically abused and kept in a cage during a series of alleged offences by her father who disagreed with her un-Islamic lifestyle, a court heard. Amina Al-Jeffrey, 21, was born in Swansea but moved to Saudia Arabia aged 16 as her father objected to her western lifestyle. She has been held captive in her academic father's home ever since, the family division of the High Court was told yesterday. Saudi authorities would not recognise Miss Al-Jeffery's British citizenship, the forced marriage unit of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) said, adding that "steps need to be taken to ensure Amina is returned to the UK where her safety can be guaranteed". According to The Times, her father, Mohammed al-Jeffrey, 62, works at the Abdulaziz Un...

    The UK’s biggest bank has changed its rules to force business customers to effectively pay for having funds in their accounts. HSBC said the charge could only apply to funds held in foreign currencies, not in pounds. The bank, which made £520 profit a second in the first three months of this year, quietly made the change to its terms and conditions in February this year. HSBC’s move emerged a day after 1.3 million NatWest business customers were also warned they could be hit with negative interest rates. Neither HSBC or NatWest said they planned to charge personal current account customers negative rates. But Charlotte Nelson, from the website Moneyfacts, warned: “If one bank were to do it, I could see others following suit.” Mortgage expert Ray Boulger said: “Eventually p...

    The YouGov poll for the Times suggests Labour has 28 per cent of the vote share while the Conservatives are on 40 per cent – providing them with a 12-point lead. It appears to be the biggest gap between the two parties since the end of Gordon Brown’s premiership in 2010 following the financial crash. Interestingly, when Labour voters were asked by YouGov to choose between Ms May and Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister a large proportion – 29 per cent – opted for the Tory leader. If compared with the 9.3 million who voted Labour at the general election in 2015 it would be equivalent to 2.7 million voters. The poll added that among voters generally around 19 per cent thought Mr Corbyn would make a better Prime Minister than Ms May. A second poll on Tuesday appeared to show the T...

    Police are investigating the death of a British woman in Pakistan after her husband claimed she was the victim of an honour killing for marrying a man from outside the family allegedly against her parents’ wishes. Samia Shahid, a 28-year-old Bradford, died on Wednesday while visiting relatives in Pandori village near Mangla Dam in northern Punjab, the Foreign Office has confirmed. Shahid’s local MP, Naz Shah, has demanded that authorities in Pakistan exhume her body and commission an independent autopsy. The police officer running the investigation in Pakistan told the Guardian he had sent samples from the body to the country’s top forensics lab in Lahore on Tuesday. Mohammad Aqeel Abbas, the station house officer for Jhelum district who is investigating the case, said a p...

    Prime Minister Theresa May has arrived in Northern Ireland for talks with the region's political leaders on the fall-out from the EU referendum result. Mrs May is meeting Stormont First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness at Stormont Castle, Belfast. Brexit is set to dominate the agenda. In Northern Ireland 56% voted to Remain and the UK-wide vote to Leave has triggered intense political wrangling in the region. The result has sparked a renewed debate on a potential referendum on Irish reunification with the Republic of Ireland, an EU member state. The Stormont Executive is divided on the EU issue, with Mrs Foster's Democratic Unionists backing Brexit and Mr McGuinness's Sinn Fein advocating Remain. Ahead of her visit, Mrs May insisted the UK...

    A Labour MP has accused aides to Jeremy Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell of entering her House of Commons office without permission. Seema Malhotra said the action constituted a "breach of parliamentary privilege" and has lodged a formal complaint with Commons Speaker John Bercow. In a statement to The Observer, Ms Malhotra – who quit the shadow cabinet last month in protest at Mr Corbyn's leadership and is now backing the challenger Owen Smith – said her staff felt "harassed, intimidated and insecure" as a result of what had happened. A spokesman for Mr Corbyn played down the incident and said that claims of intimidation were "untrue". The latest extraordinary twist comes against repeated claims that critics of the Labour leader – particularly women MPs – have ...

    To everyone’s relief, the economic impact of the Brexit vote has so far not been as bad as many – including me – feared it might be. Well, perhaps not everyone, for there is nothing quite as galling as to be proved wrong. For many of those who warned of catastrophe, a recession is still greatly to be desired – so as to punish voters for their own stupidity, as it were. This is a natural enough reaction, but it is not at all constructive, particularly when it comes to business, where success depends on the ability to adapt and respond opportunistically and optimistically to any change in circumstance. It’s still far too early to make firm judgements, obviously, and there have already been a number of not entirely welcome consequences of Brexit, not least a 10 per cent deval...

    The rocket launched with a loud bang and the sound reverberated through the air. Tim Locks faced an agonising few seconds wait before it reached its target and a cloud of dust and smoke rose from where the building had been. It was a perfect, direct hit and his comrades let out a huge cheer. Tim was on the front line in Kurdistan and inside the building had been IS jihadists, also known as Daesh . He says bluntly: “I didn’t feel anything towards the people I was killing. I had long since stopped seeing Daesh as human, so I had no empathy for them. “I may as well have been shooting rubber ducks at the fairground.” His matter-of-fact response to taking the lives of enemies is something you would expect from a man in the military. After all, they are trained to kill. But Tim ...