UK: Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Thursday 30 Nov 2017
Donald Trump yesterday told Theresa May “don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism … within the UK”, via Twitter. The US President lashed out, initially at the wrong Theresa May, in response to a Downing St condemnation of him re-tweeting Islamophobic videos originally posted by Britain First.
A British man who travelled to Syria via Iraq this summer to fight with Kurdish forces against Islamic State has been killed while clearing mines in Raqqa. Oliver Hall, 24 and from Portsmouth, is the seventh Briton to be killed while fighting or working with the Kurdish YPG in Syria. He is thought to have no previous military training.
Drivers on Virgin’s west coast mainline services between London and Glasgow are to strike six times in December and January, the RMT union says. A 24-hour stoppage on Friday 22 December will impinge on people travelling for Christmas, granted that Christmas Day is a Monday this year. The dispute is over pay and conditions.
A study by the European Society of Cardiology has found that baldness or grey hair in men under 40 is more of a predictor, or “risk factor”, of heart disease than obesity. But the British Heart Foundation stressed that the findings do not mean men should abandon plans to improve lifestyles to reduce high cholesterol or blood pressure.
Drug firms are competing to produce new therapies for migraine which work by creating antibodies to neutralise the brain chemical calcitonin gene-related peptide. Two of the new drugs have had clinical trials, with King’s College Hospital calling the results a “huge deal”. One drug halved the number of attacks for 50% of subjects.
Freezing temperatures are expected for large parts of the UK today. Between 2cm and 5cm of snow is expected in northern Scotland and northeast England – and there is also a risk of snow in the East Midlands and East Anglia. Central parts of the country can expect temperatures as low as -4C overnight and there are warnings of surface ice.
It is still not known how Serbian war criminal Slobodan Praljak obtained the poison which he drank in court at The Hague yesterday. Praljak died after drinking a small bottle of liquid and declaring his innocence after the court upheld a 20-year sentence. The 72-year-old said: “I just drank poison. I am not a war criminal. I oppose this conviction.”
Oscar-winning Australian actor Geoffrey Rush has vehemently denied a claim of “inappropriate behaviour” the Sydney Theatre Company says it received against him during a production of King Lear 21 months ago. Rush says he has not been told what the complaint alleges he did, either at the time or now that it has been made public.
A class action lawsuit is being brought against Google in the UK, in the name of more than five million former iPhone users. Led by consumer body Which?, the suit says Google unlawfully harvested personal data from smartphone users between June 2011 and February 2012 by bypassing the default privacy settings on the Apple device.
Britain has reportedly agreed to increase the Brexit “divorce bill” payment from £20bn to as much as almost £50bn to pay its debts to the European Union and it hopes, depart with a good EU-UK trade deal.
However, while Britain will pay its liabilities in full, “the actual divorce bill may never be known”, says Politico’s Jack Blanchard.
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