Railway strikes in the UK have halted services throughout July and Augst 2022.
Sony, owners and creators of the gaming sensation PlayStation, have been hit with a lawsuit with a possible £5 billion pay out.
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The UK government has once again extended its trade sanctions with Russia.
The UK underwent a record-breaking heatwave in July with another hitting the country in August.
The UK has blocked a Chinese company from purchasing intellectual property from the University of Manchester using its powers under the National Security and Investment Act.
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Spain's biggest economic hurdle has been youth unemployment, at around 40%, for many years. Now it has become one of the hardest COVID hit nations within Continental Europe. The nations’ central bank has predicted a 15.1% contraction in the economy if there is a 2nd wave of lockdown restrictions.
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In July 2020, a Bosnian volunteer handed over more than “1,600 pages of media reports and personal testimonies to Austria’s parliament, documenting the brutality of Croatia’s border police against irregular migrants”. The Border Violence Monitoring Network has observed an “increase in violence against refugees on the Croatian side since spring 2017”. Yet most, if not all, reports of violence by Croatian police continue to go unchecked.
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Despite Norway’s green credentials, its wealth has mostly been accumulated from huge oil exports.[LE1] Norway’s Nature and Youth group along with Greenpeace Norway are challenging what they describe as ‘double standards’, in a lawsuit disputing government issued oil licenses.
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On 11 December 2020, the UK Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling on the hugely anticipated Merricks v Mastercard case.[1] This has followed the £14bn collective action on behalf of 46.2 million consumers, brought against Mastercard concerning anti-competitive interchange fees.
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Throughout 2020, NHS workers worked tirelessly to save thousands of lives across the UK. While their efforts have been praised via social media channels and “clap for carers” last year, NHS workers are still being overlooked by the government after requests for a 15% pay rise have been ignored.
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The Law Society has again called for non-means tested legal aid to be made available to domestic abuse victims after government data revealed unprecedented high numbers of family court applications. Data from the Ministry of Justice last week showed an increase in the number of domestic violence remedy order applications between July and September this year.
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There has been an ‘urgent notification’ issued to the justice secretary addressing major concerns of the quality of care and leadership at a privately run youth prison near Rugby.
This notification could be considered emergency action, and these notices are rare, but the so-called “bleak regime” has raised widespread concern.
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Facebook is being sued in the US in a landmark lawsuit that could end up with the tech giant being stripped of its prized assets, Instagram and Facebook.[1] Regulators, who argue Facebook built its digital monopoly over the years by violating antitrust (competition) laws, are considering breaking up the company.
Though it was only 10 days ago that the first person in the United Kingdom had received the heavily anticipated Pfizer vaccine, said to be 90% effective against combating Covid-19, increasing whispers about a different variant or modified strain of Covid have been spreading through the South East of England, about as quickly as the new strain has too.
Recently, influential legal and commercial entities have joined the bid for the UK’s accession into the convention by writing to Charles Michel, president of the European Council. These include the law societies of England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; City of London Corporation; British Retail Consortium; British Chamber of Commerce EU & Belgium; Which?; and the Chambers of Ireland.
The title, a famous Hollywood line from Top Gun, brings back wonderful high-speed memories of the Concorde. The legendary aircraft of old has been grounded and retired since 2003 after more than 30 years of record-breaking commercial flights. However, putting aside it’s breaking of the sound barrier, the Concorde’s wings were clipped for various reasons, and the major reasons being environmental.
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On Wednesday 9th December, Labour's Dame Diana Johnson introduced a Ten-Minute Rule on the ‘Sexual Exploitation Bill’. If introduced it would make paying for sex a criminal offence and decriminalises selling sex. This would create offences of enabling or profiting from someone else's sexual exploitation, among other things.
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With the imminent arrival of the first vaccinations against COVID-19, the Labour Party has called for new laws to introduce criminal and financial penalties for social media companies that fail to crack down on misinformation surrounding coronavirus (specifically “dangerous anti-vaccine content” that appears on their networks.
In an investigation conducted by The Guardian, it was found that the UK government procured PPE kits from Chinese factories that employed North Korean women working under conditions of ‘modern slavery’. The government received huge backlash and criticism from Human Rights activists for their lack of due diligence in coming up with policies and steps that instead of discouraging and tackling the problem of modern slavery, aided and contributed to it.
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While this year has undoubtedly been one for the history books, seeing a housing ‘boom’ is something many wouldn’t have predicted. However, it turns out that not only being cooped up with in-laws, parents, and partners has been a blessing for the stable family unit, it’s seemingly worked wonders for the property market too.
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Multiple individuals have reported receiving marketing emails from Klarna, a ‘buy now, pay later’ service, despite never having signed up.
The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) have announced that they will make enquiries into Klarna, as many people complained after receiving the email.
