United Kingdom

Plans to close the only school of no religious character in its area and replace it with a Church of England school have been scrapped. The move has been welcomed by Humanists UK, who has been working with teachers, parents, and the National Education Union (NEU) to stop the proposal

Heard the editor being interviewed on Radio4 Today Programme this morning. This 90s throwback is bizarre. Do people really think there will be demand from this after the initial novelty?

I read a couple articles this morning and the "journalism" reads like a Sunday Sport article.

Interesting thought experiment - since the magazine is online only - are the nonces going to have to print out the magazine now to leave it in shubbery for kids to find? Those reddit threads where every man over the age of 40 seems to have a story about finding porn mags in bushes always had a creepy undertone. I'm not sure that the 'porn fairy' commenters sometimes refer to was a very savoury character.

Rushed through last minute before parliament is dissolved using emergency powers.

Should've been debated in the commons at least.

Exclusive: Footage shows private event, attended by representatives of firms including StubHub and Viagogo, where £73,000 was raised for political lobbying

The close relationship between a Saudi-backed football club and a local authority has been criticised by human rights campaigners.

BBC File on 4 has discovered a senior Newcastle City Council officer wrote to Newcastle United (NUFC) co-owner Amanda Staveley asking her to lobby government ministers over repairs to the Tyne Bridge when funding from the Department for Transport stalled.

Saudi Arabia's human rights record was raised when the club was taken over in 2021, but there are concerns it is being ignored by a council desperate for investment.

NUFC declined to comment. The Saudi Embassy in the UK and Ms Staveley have not responded. The council said close co-operation with the football club was beneficial for the city.

A spokesman for the local authority said the investment it brought to the city "ultimately puts money in the pockets of all our residents".

'Expedite vital funding'

Last year, Ms Staveley, a minority shareholder who has become the face of the club’s Saudi ownership, asked senior council officer Michelle Percy to prepare a briefing ahead of a meeting she was having with Lord Dominic Johnson, a UK investment minister.

The briefing concentrated on attracting Saudi investment to the north-east of England.

Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the campaign group NUFC Fans Against Sportswashing, and seen by File on 4, reveal Ms Percy then wrote to Ms Staveley in January.

She complained a grant for the restoration of the Tyne Bridge had not been signed off by the government and asked for help in "reaching out to the PM and ministers at a high level".

Ms Staveley then wrote to two figures in government, whose names have been redacted, asking for help to "expedite the process of releasing this vital funding".

Within three weeks, the government confirmed it was awarding the council £35m to help restore the bridge.

The Department for Transport (DfT) said, by the time Ms Staveley’s email was received, the business case for the Tyne Bridge was already in the final stages of approval and the email played no part in the release of the funding.

The football club Newcastle United FC was bought by the Saudi Public Investment Fund in 2021.

File on 4 has discovered the council backtracked on plans to create a forum to discuss human rights with supporters and campaigners, which it proposed when the football club was bought by the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) in October 2021.

At the time, the Premier League received "legally binding assurances" from the PIF, which provided 80% of funds for the deal, that the Saudi state would not control Newcastle United.

However, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Salman, is the chairman of the PIF and its governor is Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the director of Newcastle United.

Saudi Arabia has been widely criticised for human rights abuses, including the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul in 2018.

It was accused last week of ordering the killing of villagers who stood in the way of a futuristic city under construction in the desert called NEOM.

The council said it "shares" concerns about human rights across the world but argued it was up to the UK government to address these issues.

Results from another FOI submitted by the campaign group suggest the council asked the club for £23m to help fund a free meal for every child in the city every day for a year.

The local authority has had to cut £369m from its budget since 2010.

Director of human rights research group Fair Square, Nick McGeehan, said: "I think it's a huge problem when a cash-strapped local council has very strong links to a capital rich, very wealthy foreign state, particularly when that foreign state is deeply autocratic and anti-democratic.

"That poses a risk to the council because it means, in certain situations, the council is not going to stand up for local values or principles, but will keep quiet in order to satisfy the commercial interests of its foreign partner."

Scientists say they've found a way to recycle cement from demolished concrete buildings.

Cement is the modern world's most common construction material, but it is also a huge source of planet-warming gas emissions.

That is because of the chemical reactions when you heat limestone to high temperatures by burning fossil fuels.

Recycling cement would massively reduce its carbon footprint. Researchers say that if they switched to electric-powered furnaces, and used renewable energy like wind and solar rather than fossil fuels, that could mean no greenhouse gases would be released at all.

...

The team of scientists, from Cambridge University, has found a neat way to sidestep those emissions.

It exploits the fact that you can reactivate used cement by exposing it to high temperatures again.

The chemistry is well-established, and it has been done at scale in cement kilns.

The breakthrough is to prove it can be done by piggybacking on the heat generated by another heavy industry – steel recycling.

When you recycle steel, you add chemicals that float on the surface of the molten metal to prevent it reacting with the air and creating impurities. This is known as slag.

The Cambridge team spotted the composition of used cement is almost exactly the same as the slag used in electric arc furnaces.

Microsoft's new AI tools are drawing concern from the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), with the recently announced "Recall" feature of Copilot+ PCs being named a potential security risk. The ICO joins industry veterans and privacy campaigners in investigating the safety of Recall, a snapshot-collection feature turned "privacy nightmare".

"We are making enquiries with Microsoft to understand the safeguards in place to protect user privacy," said an ICO spokesperson. The ICO, the UK's office over data protection and user privacy, says that firms like Microsoft "must rigorously assess and mitigate risks to peoples' rights and freedoms" before offering new products or services. Dr. Kris Shrishak, adviser on privacy at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, went a step further, saying that "[Recall] could be a privacy nightmare. The mere fact that screenshots will be taken during use of the device could have a chilling effect on people."

As we previously reported, Recall could potentially pose some serious privacy risks even if it works as advertised. The new feature is a part of Microsoft's new Copilot+ PC family of laptops, Arm-based Windows machines tuned for AI performance, and a suite of AI upgrades to leverage their new NPU power. Recall remembers what you've seen on your computer for you, taking screenshots every few seconds to curate a full log of your activity in case you forget where you've seen something. The AI comes in as you search your history, for example bringing up all images with "red shoes" in them when you search for "red shoes".

More than two-thirds of beer and wine served in UK pubs and bars is short measured, a survey by Trading Standards suggests.

Officers who visited 77 pubs and bars were served 96 short measures out of 137 orders, meaning approximately 70% were less than the prescribed quantity required by The Weights and Measures Order for pints and half pints and 175ml glasses of wine.

Of the short measures, 41 were under by 5% or more – 29% of the 137 drinks tested.

Some 86% of all beer ordered was short measured, as was 43% of wine.

The average deficit for short-measured beer was 4%, while for wine it was 5%.

For the average beer drinker, this equates to a loss of £1.70 per week, or £88.40 a year, and for an average wine drinker in the UK this jumps to £2.20 per week or £114.40 per year, the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) said.

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Britons will be urged to stockpile tinned food, batteries and bottled water under a new campaign launched by the UK government to encourage the public to prepare for emergencies.

Oliver Dowden, deputy prime minister, will on Wednesday unveil a new website designed to help households mitigate potential harm from an array of risks, ranging from flooding and power outages to biosecurity crises such as another pandemic.
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The “Prepare” website launched on Wednesday calls on households to stock up on bottled water. It suggests a minimum supply of about three litres of drinking water per person per day, but recommends 10 litres per person per day — to aid basic cooking and hygiene needs — as a more comfortable level of supplies.

It also urges people to buy and store non-perishable food that “doesn’t need cooking, such as ready-to-eat tinned meat, fruit or vegetables”, as well as a tin opener, plus baby supplies and pet food where relevant.

Battery or wind-up torches and radios, a first aid kit, and wet wipes are among other emergency supplies detailed on the government checklist.

Speaking at the London Defence Conference, Dowden will say “resilience begins at home” and cite polling by the conference showing that only 15 per cent of people have an emergency supply kit in their homes, while more than 40 per cent of people do not have three days’ supplies of non-perishable food and water.

Government officials said the advice would bring Britain in line with nations such as Finland and Japan, which are regarded as leaders in citizen resilience.