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Home Office agrees support for Hampshire force’s £803,000 protest policing costs
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary says it spent more than £800,000 responding to small boat arrivals in Portsmouth and Gosport and the protests they prompted. The Home Office has agreed to a funding package to support the policing response, though the final reimbursement could still be reviewed and negotiated. The force’s additional costs were…
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Reform UK and Greens no longer considered main parties, stark new poll shows
A new YouGov poll suggests voters are increasingly unlikely to see Reform UK or the Green Party as parties capable of forming a government. Labour and the Conservatives remain the only parties viewed that way by a majority, signalling a shift towards perceptions of a two-party system and weakening confidence in Nigel Farage’s prospects as…
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Brent rises as report outlines possible US-Israeli campaign against Iran
Brent crude rose 2.68 per cent to $111.74 a barrel amid a report that US and Israeli commanders have planned a possible new campaign against Iran after the US midterm elections. The reported plans matter politically because higher oil and petrol prices are adding to pressure on household budgets just 12 days before the vote,…
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Downing Street defends Jackdaw announcement timing after Speaker’s rebuke
Downing Street has defended the Government’s decision to announce approval for North Sea gas drilling to the media before ministers addressed MPs, saying the timing followed a long-standing practice for commercially sensitive announcements. Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle criticised the order of events, arguing that Parliament should have heard about the decision before it was…
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32 government services taken offline during precautionary PHP security updates
The government took 32 services offline and made four others partly unavailable while applying precautionary security updates for a critical vulnerability in PHP, the programming language used to run many websites. Ministers said the outages were part of efforts to protect systems and did not mean they had been hacked; no large public-facing critical services…
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Sources allege Vance grew angry over delayed speech amid tech donor tensions
JD Vance reportedly became frustrated when Elon Musk and Nvidia chief Jensen Huang spoke beyond their allotted time at an event near the National Mall, delaying his appearance. The account, attributed to four sources, describes aides pressing organisers to end the discussion so Vance could take the stage; it comes amid reported tensions between Vance…
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Websites across world hit by millions of attempts to exploit PHP code flaw
A newly discovered flaw in PHP, the programming language used by about 70% of the world’s websites, has prompted organisations to take sites offline while they install a fix. The US National Security Agency warned that attackers could use it to take control of web servers, steal data and disrupt services, raising particular concerns for…
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Save high street by taxing online sales at higher rate, Burnham urged
Andy Haldane, president of the British Chambers of Commerce and a former adviser to Andy Burnham, has urged the government to tax online sales more heavily than shop sales. He says the tax system favours large digital businesses over smaller physical retailers, worsening pressure on high streets, and has called for the change alongside a…
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Star Trek faces an uncertain future as anniversary celebrations begin in Rome
At Rome’s MIA Market, Roddenberry Entertainment chief Trevor Roth said Star Trek is at a crossroads as current series approach their endings, it has been some time since a film was released, and studio ownership changes raise questions about the franchise’s future. He said Roddenberry’s leaders have ideas for its next incarnations and remain confident…
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Sainsbury’s warns of tough Christmas as households curb spending
Sainsbury’s chief executive Simon Roberts expects a “pretty challenging” run-up to Christmas as households limit spending and food producers face rising costs. He urged the government not to add to business costs in next week’s budget, and said high energy and fertiliser prices could push food prices up next year. The supermarket’s sales grew 2.6%…