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Cuba, China and Russia on Tuesday were elected to the U.N. Human Rights Council -- a move that the U.S. branded a “mockery” of the body's intended purpose and as proof that Washington was right to leave the council in 2018. The three countries, all with a history of authoritarianism and human rights abuses, were elected by the U.N. General Assembly, along with countries including Bolivia, France, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan, Senegal, Uzbekistan and the United Kingdom. Saudi Arabia was on the ballot but failed to drum up enough support to win a seat.

Unilever’s UK shareholders have voted overwhelmingly in favour of plans to move the Marmite owner's legal base to London, despite warnings that a vote on a proposed exit tax if it leaves the Netherlands could go down to the wire. The shift to a single legal headquarters in Britain was backed by 99.5pc of voting investors at a meeting on Monday, bringing the firm one step closer to abandoning its dual-headed Anglo-Dutch structure after 90 years. Dutch investors in Unilever, which also owns Dove soap and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, approved the move with 99.4pc support last month. But...

SEVINGTON, England (AP) — Four years after Britain voted to leave the European Union, Brexit can still seem abstract. But in the county known as the Garden of England, it is literally taking concrete form. Just beyond the ancient oaks and yews that surround medieval St. Mary’s Church in the village of Sevington, bulldozers, dump trucks and cement mixers swarm noisily over a field. They are chewing up land to create part of Britain’s new border with the European Union — a customs clearance depot with room for up to 2,000 trucks. No one asked local people for permission, and...

Osama bin Laden's ex-London spokesman has been freed from a US jail to return to Britain on compassionate grounds - because he at high risk from coronavirus due to his obesity. Terror spin doctor Adel Abdel Bary, 60, was imprisoned over the devastating 1998 attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. He was arrested the next year and extradited to America where he struck a plea deal which ended with him being sentenced to 25 years behind bars in 2015. Bary had been charged with 285 offences, eventually pleaded guilty to just a handful, including...

British ministers have been told to forge links with the White House frontrunner Joe Biden after “writing off” Donald Trump’s chances of re-election, amid fears that the UK could be left out in the cold if the former vice-president wins. Boris Johnson has been warned that Trump is on course for a landslide defeat with his Democratic opponents set to land a historic “triple whammy” by seizing control of the presidency, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Private polling and computer models shown to No 10 last month put Biden’s chances of victory at more than 70 per cent....

Boris Johnson is reportedly trying to woo US Presidential candidate Joe Biden with Downing Street increasingly convinced that Donald Trump will not be re-elected. Johnson has been shown private polling that shows Biden is on track for a landslide victory, spurring him to try to build ties with the former Vice President. The Sunday Times reports that a foreign secretary Dominic Raab and the UK’s ambassador to the US Dame Karen Pierce have been conducting backroom talks with close Biden allies. A senior Tory source told the Times: “They’re writing off Trump in Number 10 now.” Downing Street is worried...

FLEETWOOD, Pa. - About a month and half ago, in Lancashire, England, in the coastal town of Fleetwood, a teenager having suicidal thoughts sent a message to the Fleetwood Police Department's Facebook page. His distraught state of mind prevented him from realizing the message went a continent away, to Fleetwood, Berks County, and to the attention of police Chief Steven Stinsky. Stinsky engaged with the teen on Facebook Messenger. "I started looking through social media," Stinsky recalled. "I ended up finding the subject's Facebook page, and based on the vernacular he used in conversations, it wasn't long before I realized...

Boris Johnson has declared that wind power is the future of Britain's energy .. But an investigation has revealed turbine owners are being paid over the odds .. Civil servants set subsidy rate so high it's been branded ‘licence to print money’.. A botched green scheme is paying wind turbine owners seven times the value of the electricity they generate – and it is set to cost UK consumers an estimated £1.4billion. The Daily Mail can reveal the eyewatering fiasco in the week Boris Johnson declared that wind power was the future for the nation’s energy generation. The scheme was...

London (CNN) — Five parrots have been removed from public view at a British wildlife park after they started swearing at customers. The foul-mouthed birds were split up after they launched a number of different expletives at visitors and staff just days after being donated to Lincolnshire Wildlife Park in eastern England. "It just went ballistic, they were all swearing," the venue's chief executive Steve Nichols told CNN Travel on Tuesday. "We were a little concerned about the children." "I get called a fat t**t every time I walk past," Nichols complained.

Phone app records whether traveler is corona compliant.. Passengers on United Airlines and Cathay Pacific traveling out of Heathrow Airport will begin testing a new ‘COVID passport’ that in the future will check if someone has been vaccinated before they travel. The technology is called CommonPass and will let people travel without being quarantined if they download an app to their phone which contains a negative COVID test or a vaccine certificate. “The phone software is a digital health pass which can hold a certified COVID-19 test status or show someone has been vaccinated in future in a way designed...

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pressed ahead with his Intermarket Bill, calling Brussels' bluff about its threats to sue London over what many have described as a unilateral violation of an international treaty. As Brussels presses ahead with a drawn-out and tedious legal action - which will ultimately come to nothing since a decision might not arrive until after the transition period ends Dec. 31 - allowed per the resolution mechanisms hashed out in the withdrawal agreement, Johnon is once again drawing a line in the sand, upping the pressure by declaring Oct. 15 - ie a week from...

Top scientists are calling for a herd immunity approach to the coronavirus pandemic by allowing people who are less vulnerable to the effects of the disease to return to normal life. The so-called Great Barrington declaration, signed by leading experts from the universities of Oxford, Nottingham, Edinburgh, Exeter, Cambridge, Sussex and York, suggests herd immunity as a way forward. The declaration states: "The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to coronavirus through natural...

Japan’s two biggest automakers, Toyota and Nissan, will ask Britain to reimburse them for additional custom charges incurred if the UK government fails to reach a Brexit trade deal with the European Union, the Nikkei financial daily reported on Monday. The companies - Toyota Motor Corp and Nissan Motor Co Ltd - want payments to cover the additional 10% tax on automobile imports from Britain that the EU would impose should Britain crash out of the EU without an agreement, the Nikkei said, without citing sources.

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Gina Haspel is personally blocking the declassification and release of key Russiagate documents in the hopes that President Donald Trump will lose his re-election bid, multiple senior U.S. officials told The Federalist. The officials said Haspel, who served under former CIA Director John Brennan as the spy agency’s station chief in London in 2016 and 2017, is concerned that the declassification and release of documents detailing what the CIA was doing during the 2016 election and the 2017 transition could embarrass the CIA and potentially even implicate Haspel herself. “Haspel and [FBI Director Christopher] Wray...

Rishi Sunak warned of tax rises to come and lavished praise on “special” Boris Johnson today as he tried to quell growing rumors of a feud over lockdown. The Chancellor hailed the PM as a “close personal friend” and “rare” communicator who had “got the big calls right” as he delivered his keynote speech to Tory conference. He even noted that their families were “joined” and his daughters loved Mr. Johnson’s dog Dilyn. Mr. Sunak again conceded that he will not be able to save all jobs, but pointed to the huge government bailouts so far and said his sole...

An eagle eyed plane spotter in Hawaii raised suspicions that the president could be incapacitated moments before news broke that he had tested positive for coronavirus. Two E-6B Mercury jets – known as the Navy’s doomsday planes – were launched off both the east and west coast in the early hours of the morning.The planes are designed to fly aerobatic-like manoeuvres over the sea that allows them to send messages to ballistic missile submarines hiding below, effectively safeguarding the country in the event that the White House is immobilised. In an atomic war, the E-6s would relay directions to help...

CIA Director Gina Haspel is personally blocking the declassification of documents detailing corruption at the highest levels of the intelligence community during the 2016 election, according to The Federalist co-founder Sean Davis. While new information about wrongdoing at the FBI has recently been declassified, including recent revelations about Hillary Clinton campaign’s collusion with Russia, Davis reported on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Wednesday that Haspel herself is standing in the way of the declassification of other relevant documents. ... Notably, Haspel was previously the London CIA station chief under former CIA director John Brennan during the 2016 election. “Recall it was London...

A Conservative MP has called for mandatory coronavirus vaccination certificates distributed by the Army that will determine whether people will be allowed to travel internationally. During a debate in the British Parliament last night, MP Tobias Ellwood urged the Prime Minister to have the British Armed Forces oversee that COVID-19 vaccination roll out process. Noting that a coronavirus vaccine was potentially six months away, Ellwood said, “Mass vaccine roll out is an enormous responsibility and we need to get it right.” Ellwood said he had written to Boris Johnson urging him to give the power to a Ministry of Defence...

THE QUEEN'S officials in Buckingham Palace sent a message to Prince Harry after the Duke of Sussex broke with royal protocol this week by intervening in the US presidential election.

Protesters gathered outside the RTE studios in Donnybrook on Friday to tell Late Late Show guest Dr Anthony Fauci to ‘go home’. The American immunologist has served as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, and appeared on Friday’s episode of the Late Late Show via Zoom to speak to Ryan Tubridy about the progress of the COVID-19 pandemic. Posts encouraging people to protest Dr Fauci’s appearance on the Late Late Show circulated on social media earlier this week, announcing that a ‘rally for truth’ would be held from 5pm on September 25 outside ‘the...