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Social distancing would mean '1km queues at Heathrow for EACH plane' airport boss warns

Social distancing at airports would lead to 1km-long queues for each jumbo jet, Heathrow's chief executive has claimed.




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What is an 'awake' operation? The technique being increasingly used during the coronavirus pandemic

FULL STORY: Patients kept awake during cancer surgery to protect them from coronavirus




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Eta Aquariid meteor shower set to dazzle overnight on Tuesday as celestial display reaches its peak

Stargazers can expect to see up to 40 meteors per hour blaze through the night sky before sunrise on Wednesday




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Government says 'questions to be asked' about coronavirus origin after Mike Pompeo claims Covid-19 began in Wuhan laboratory

There are "questions to be asked" about where coronavirus came from, Boris Johnson's spokesperson has said.




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Sadiq Khan 'really worried' about capital's transport after lockdown easing

The Mayor of London warned against a 'big bang' of lifting lockdown measures




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Thousands of London restaurants and bars 'on brink of collapse as they do not qualify for Government's emergency grants'

Campaign launched to increase threshold on rateable value to help struggling businesses




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Food For London Now faces: 'Beyond the pandemic the need for food is unquantifiable'

Anne Elkins from The Felix Project shares her story You can donate here virginmoneygiving.com/fund/FoodforLondonNOW




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Union demands Sadiq Khan make travel free for Tube cleaners who are 'integral' to capital's coronavirus response

Union bosses have written to Sadiq Khan to demand a reversal of Transport for London's "disgraceful" decision to deny free travel to London Underground's cleaners.




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Fewer than 300 people quarantined as 18.1 million travellers entered UK before lockdown

Out of millions of visitors coming into the UK from coronavirus hotspots, less than 300 were put into quarantine in the three months before lockdown.




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Nearly quarter of all UK workers furloughed in just two weeks after Government job retention scheme launched

Nearly a quarter of employees in Britain have been furloughed in just two weeks, officials have said.




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Queen discusses Australian coronavirus response with Prime Minister Scott Morrison

The Queen has spoken to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to discuss how the country is fighting coronavirus.




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Donald Trump doesn't wear face covering on tour of mask factory despite sign saying they're required

Donald Trump toured a new medical mask factory without wearing a face covering, despite a sign at the facility making clear they were required.




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Boris Johnson to face Keir Starmer at PMQs after UK coronavirus death toll becomes highest in Europe

Boris Johnson will today come under fresh criticism over his handling of the coronavirus crisis as he faces Sir Keir Starmer for the first time during Prime Minister's Questions.




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Extinction Rebellion activists spray Barclays HQ with 'fake oil' in middle of lockdown

Extinction Rebellion activists have sprayed fake oil over the Barclays head office in an apparent breach of lockdown rules.




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Sadiq Khan urges Londoners not to relax 'monumental effort' to beat coronavirus over Bank Holiday weekend

Mayor Sadiq Khan today made an urgent appeal to Londoners not to relax their "monumental effort" to beat coronavirus as the death toll in the capital's hospitals rose to 5,414.




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VE Day 2020 LIVE: Queen to make historic address to the nation as Brits prepare to celebrate 75th anniversary

The nation is preparing to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE) Day , with the Queen set to make a historic address to mark the occasion.




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Queen recalls being 'swept along on a tide of happiness and relief' during VE Day celebrations

The Queen's memories of her VE Day celebrations have been shared by Buckingham Palace to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe.




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Next steps of UK lockdown 'to include face masks at work, more cycle lanes and visitor quarantine'

UK arrivals could be told to self-isolate for 14-days PM will reportedly recommend face masks while at work or on public transport More money will be set aside for cycle lanes to limit rush hour travel




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Arrivals in UK airports and sea ports 'to enter enforced quarantine for two weeks'

One trade body said the quarantine period would have a devastating impact on the UK aviation industry and wider economy




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Moments in history quiz: where in the world

You may be familiar with these iconic images, but where did the events take place?

Where did this ship dock on 22 June 1948?

Felixstowe

Liverpool

Southampton

Tilbury

Where was this short-lived celebration?

Berlin

Budapest

Paris

Prague

Where did these three famously meet?

Geneva

Nuremberg

Potsdam

Yalta

Prime Minister Harold Wilson, with pipe and sunburnt legs, is on holiday where?

Anglesey

Isles of Scilly

Isle of Wight

Isle of Skye

This Pablo Picasso masterpiece depicts the carnage of the Spanish civil war in which region?

Asturias

Basque Country

Galicia

Catalonia

One of the most famous fights in history took place where?

Kinshasa

Las Vegas

Manila

Mexico City

This didn't end well. Where did it all start?

Belgrade

Sarajevo

Versaille

Vienna

This is somewhere between Ibiza and the Norfolk Broads – but where exactly?

Brixton

Camden

Hackney

Soho

It's a wrap! Where did this take place?

Berlin

Moscow

Paris

Stockholm

Gazza's tears made him the most famous person in the UK for a while, but where was this match played?

Milan

Naples

Rome

Turin

Where are these matchstick men and women?

Birmingham

Liverpool

Manchester

Newcastle

Fidel could always draw a crowd - where was this one?

Havana

Moscow

New York

Rio de Janeiro

Where did the Arab spring begin?

Egypt

Libya

Lebanon

Tunisia

The barefoot runner, the nasty fall ... but in which Olympics did this controversial race take place?

Moscow

Barcelona

Seoul

Los Angeles

Nelson Mandela was freed just over 30 years ago. Where was the jail he walked out of to greet cheering crowds?

Paarl, near Cape Town

Robben Island

Sun City, south of Johannesburg

Pretoria Central

Which English town did Malcolm X visit just nine days before he was assassinated?

Halifax

Northampton

Oldham

Smethwick

13 and above.

Past master!

9 and above.

You're an old hand at this

0 and above.

Best stick to Where's Wally!

5 and above.

You're history!

Continue reading...





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I was totally prepared to quarantine for COVID-19 — and my family got it anyway

Living on a 10-acre plot of land 100 kilometres outside Toronto, David Stevens thought he and his family were well prepared to ride out the COVID-19 quarantine. But after a call from his mother, he learned that even the best laid plans can go wrong.




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Victory Day: Belarus swaggers on parade as Russians leave Red Square deserted

In a tale of two cities, Moscow keeps its distance while in Minsk, thousands turn out for the traditional military spectacular

In any other year, hundreds of thousands of Russians would have marched with portraits of relatives who fought in the second world war in a memorial called the Immortal Regiment.

But on Saturday, the images of Soviet veterans and their families floated past on Russian television, a public vigil adapted for the era of social isolation.

Continue reading...




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Iran quake kills at least one, sparks panic in capital

An earthquake struck early Friday near Iran's highest peak and jolted Tehran, killing at least one person and injuring more than 20 as people ran for their lives. The shallow 4.6 magnitude quake hit at 00:48 am (2018 GMT) near the city of Damavand, about 55 kilometres (34 miles) east of Tehran, the US Geological Survey said. It saw scores of residents of Tehran flee buildings for the safety of the capital's streets and parks, AFP journalists reported.





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In Flynn Case, Barr Again Takes Aim at Mueller Inquiry

WASHINGTON -- Shortly after admitting guilt to a federal judge in December 2017 for lying to the FBI, Michael Flynn issued a statement saying what he did was wrong, and "through my faith in God, I am working to set things right."It turns out that the only higher power that Flynn needed was Attorney General William Barr.Barr's extraordinary decision to drop the criminal case against Flynn shocked legal experts, won President Donald Trump's praise and prompted a career prosecutor to quit the case. It was the latest in Barr's steady effort to undo the results of the investigation by Robert Mueller, the special counsel. Barr has portrayed his effort as rectifying injustice, and the president more bluntly as an exercise in political payback.In his decisions and public comments over the past year, Barr has built an alternate narrative to the one that Mueller laid out in his voluminous report. Where the special counsel focused on Russia's expansive effort to interfere in the 2016 election, the Trump campaign's openness to it and the president's determination to impede the inquiry, Barr has focused instead on the investigators. He has suggested that they were unleashed by law enforcement and intelligence officials bent on bringing political harm to Trump.Barr has also mischaracterized the findings of the Mueller investigation, questioned why it began in the first place, used legal maneuvers to undo its courtroom successes and opened his own investigation by a hand-picked prosecutor that could bring criminal charges against former U.S. officials who played a part in setting the original inquiry into motion. Mueller and Barr, once close friends, have been like two students standing shoulder to shoulder at a blackboard: What one has diligently written down, the other has tried to steadily erase.In an interview Thursday with CBS News, Barr said he considered the Flynn case to be "part of a number of related acts -- and we're looking at the whole pattern of conduct." (The same day, Trump called it "just one piece of a very dishonest puzzle.")Recent disclosures about the FBI's handling of the Flynn case raise questions about why the bureau's leadership sent agents to interview Flynn without coordinating with top Justice Department officials, the latest in a series of revelations about FBI abuses in politically charged investigations in recent years. Barr, however, even suggested that a theory of the case embraced by Mueller and his team might have made them blind to the facts."One of the things you have to guard against, both as a prosecutor and I think as an investigator, is that if you get too wedded to a particular outcome and you're pursuing a particular agenda, you close your eyes to anything that sort of doesn't fit with your preconception," he said. "And I think that's probably the phenomenon we're looking at here."But when Mueller made his findings public, many criticized him for doing the opposite. His conclusions, especially about whether Trump had committed any obstruction of justice offenses by impeding the inquiry, were dense, burdened by legalese and appeared to reflect a tortured debate among the special counsel's team. They delivered no easy sound bite that the president's opponents could seize upon -- allowing Trump to distort the judgments by calling them a vindication of his behavior.The Mueller report "bends over backwards" to show that the special counsel's team considered all of the legal and political ramifications of investigating a sitting president, said Matthew J. Jacobs, a former federal prosecutor and now a partner at Vinson & Elkins."It gives the benefit of the doubt to the subject of the investigation that in any quote-unquote normal criminal case doesn't happen and wouldn't exist," said Jacobs, who once worked for Mueller at the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco.Barr's decision to drop the charges against Flynn was "unlike anything I've seen before," Jacobs said, adding that he saw no evidence whatsoever "that Gen. Flynn was set up or entrapped."In an unsolicited memo he wrote to the White House while still a lawyer in private practice in 2018, Barr unspooled his thoughts about what he called a "fatally misconceived" obstruction of justice theory the special counsel was reportedly pursuing as part of his investigation. Trump named him attorney general months later, but during his confirmation hearing, he pledged not to interfere with the work of Mueller and his team.Barr drew criticism for the way he characterized Mueller's findings last year in a four-page letter that -- for weeks -- served as the public's only picture of Mueller's 22-month investigation. Mueller privately wrote to the attorney general, saying he had mischaracterized the findings -- a letter Barr described as "snitty" -- and over time, Barr has repeatedly tried to emphasize the harm done to the investigative targets of the FBI and the special counsel's office.Barr's handling of the Mueller findings prompted a stinging rebuke in March from a Republican-appointed federal judge, who said the attorney general put forward a "distorted" and "misleading" account of the findings and lacked credibility on the topic.Barr has long insisted that he works independently of the White House, and in February, he said that Trump's public comments about the Justice Department sometimes made it "impossible" for him to do his job. Those comments came after Barr and other top department officials intervened to try to reduce a prison sentence in another case brought during the Mueller investigation: That of Roger Stone, a longtime friend of the president's who was convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction of justice in a bid to thwart a congressional inquiry that threatened Trump.The president has made it clear both to aides and foreign officials that he sees Barr as a crucial ally in the grinding battle against his perceived enemies. Last July, the day after Mueller's congressional testimony seemed to lower the curtain on a more than two-year drama that had imperiled the Trump presidency, Trump was on the phone with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine asking him to assist the attorney general in an investigation "to get to the bottom of" how the Russia investigation began."As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller," the president said. The requests to Zelenskiy helped form the basis of an impeachment case against Trump in the ensuing months.Weeks after that phone call, Barr was on a plane to Rome with John Durham -- the prosecutor leading the Justice Department's investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation -- to seek evidence from Italian officials that might bolster a conspiracy theory long held by Trump: That American intelligence and law enforcement officials plotted with American allies to try to prevent him from winning the presidency in 2016.They did not appear to find any evidence. It remains uncertain, however, what Durham will find over his investigation, expected to finish sometime this year, and what effect it will have on the legacy of the Mueller investigation.The president, of course, has not waited to pass judgment. He has long publicly complained that the Flynn case was a product of a cabal of former officials conspiring against him, and he seems certain to promote its collapse as he ramps up his campaign for reelectionOn Thursday, the day the Justice Department dropped the criminal charges against Flynn -- the first top White House official to have been ensnared in the Russia investigation -- Trump was on the phone with President Vladimir Putin of Russia to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.Trump boasted that the call came at an opportune time. Things are "coming in line showing what a hoax this whole investigation was -- it was a total disgrace.""I wouldn't be surprised," he said he told Putin, "if you see a lot of things happen over the next number of weeks."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company






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Nasa and Roscosmos astronauts shot into space after unusual coronavirus quarantine

Astronauts had to stay locked away on their own for longer than usual, with no visits from loved ones




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The sun is 'unusually quiet', say scientists

Our star could be in a unusually inactive phase compared to its galactic counterparts, new study shows







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What Happened Today: Health Care System Crumbles, Testing Questions

Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, answers questions about access to testing for COVID-19, false-negative results and the challenges of mass testing.





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Facebook removes accounts linked to QAnon far-right conspiracy theory

In addition to the QAnon accounts, Facebook also removed accounts linked to VDARE, a U.S. website known for posting anti-immigration content.





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Oxford's Blain caught in love quadrangle on First Dates Hotel

IN WHAT has been described as the ‘biggest plot twist since Line of Duty’ this week First Date viewers watched as Oxford’s Blain became the centre of a complicated love quadrangle.




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'Big Daddy' laps up Cipla after Q1 nos beat forecast

Shares of Cipla inched up on heavy volumes on Friday, after the company’s first quarter earnings beat the consensus estimate.




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Revival in smartphone demand in India expected from Q3: IDC

The smartphone market registered 1.5 per cent year-on-year growth in the March quarter with shipments touching 32.5 million units, IDC said in a statement. Despite the low figure, India was the only country among the top three nations to see any growth.




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How celebs are spending Mother's Day in quarantine

Laura Prepon and Denise Richards tell USA TODAY about their Mother's Day plans while Maren Morris and Cameron Diaz will celebrate as first-time moms.

      




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Quarantine hair help: How to hide roots better than a tree

Quarantine likely has you feeling like a natural woman – and not in the way Aretha Franklin sang about.

      




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'Never give up, never despair': Queen Elizabeth II's speech recalls royal father, WWII victory in 1945

Britons marked the 75th anniversary of WWII victory with a speech by Queen Elizabeth II, the only British leader left who was there on May 8, 1945.

      





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Netflix's orc cop thriller sequel 'Bright 2' lines up a director

The sequel to 2017 orc-cop buddy movie Bright, starring Will Smith, has lined up a director.




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David Ayer confirms 'Suicide Squad' fan theory about Joker's controversial tattoo

Fans were divided over some of the facial art adorning Jared Leto's take on the Joker.




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Brian May has bad news for anyone who wants a 'Bohemian Rhapsody' sequel

Who wants to make sequels forever?




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'National Treasure' sequel and TV series planned

Jerry Bruckheimer has revealed that a National Treasure 3 and a TV series are both in development.




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Val Kilmer reveals incident that led to him quitting as Batman

Val Kilmer has opened up about his decision to quit as Batman after just one movie.




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Five questions for Week 14 of the Overwatch League

Have the Seoul Dynasty been exposed? Is Echo a must-pick hero? We dive into some hot topics before Week 14 kicks off.




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Here's our dream Team USA baseball squad

Bryce Harper talks up the idea of major leaguers playing in next summer's Olympics.




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Shopify becomes Canada’s most valuable company after quarter beats expectations on back of pandemic

Larger retailers like Heinz and Loblaw signing up with Shopify