News

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor In a court decision that will trouble many, a Dutch tourist in Qatar claimed she had been raped while on holiday in the Middle Eastern state. The alleged attacker believed the sex was consensual and the 22-year-old woman requested money after the sexual encounter. The Dutch lady was not in court for the hearing in Doha, but was given a one-year suspended sentenced and a fine of around £500. Reaching this verdict will worry many...

A video of Barack Obama speaking on the perverse nature of US gun laws has emerged in the wake of the Orlando shootings. The US president talks about a meeting he came from in the Situation Room where known extremists in the US have been on ISIL websites. He points out how absurd it is that he can put these people on the no-fly list when it comes to airlines, but because of the National Rifle Association he cannot prohibit...

Owen Jones has walked out of a Sky News interview after a heated discussion over the LGBT hate crimes in Orlando. The outspoken Jones was disgusted after presenter Mark Longhurst told him people should "delineate" between Islamist terror and homophobia after the attack which killed 50 at gay Florida nightclub Pulse. Jones has gained a lot of support for his actions on social media, with most people saying they would have done the same thing. Matt Lucas praised the young...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor Two of the most outspoken MPs in the Commons have broke ranks with the party line and are backing Brexit. They become the ninth and tenth Labour Members of Parliament who are going to vote out on June 23. It is feared that working class traditional Labour voters might vote Out and swing the balance of the referendum, and with these figures backing Brexit, it could encourage core Labour voters to do the same. However,...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor As the EU referendum gets ever closer, everyone possible is chipping in with their opinion on what would happen after the votes are counted later this month. Now German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble said that a Brexit vote would one and for all mean 'Out is Out' for access to the EU single market. He has ruled out any chance Britain would have to use the European single market for trading, which is exactly the opposite...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor A hugely controversial council decision to allowing fracking in North Yorkshire may be challenged in court, an environmental group has said. Friends of the Earth said the plan to allow shale gas exploration in the village of Kirby Misperton could be taken in front of a judge. The decision last month to allow Third Energy, a fracking company, permission to test drill at the site was met with stiff local opposition. The site in Kirby...

Activist investors are relatively new but very influential players in international capital markets. They are shareholders at publicly traded companies who attempt to affect change in an organization either by directly appealing to, or putting heavy pressure on, the company’s board of directors, bypassing the normal advisory process. The scope of activist investors’ actions varies depending on their assertiveness and on what exactly they seek to change at a given company. The firms that activists target tend to underperform relative to...

By Ben Gelblum, Contributing Editor @BenGelblum To paraphrase France’s greatest export (apart from Stella Artois) Jean Paul Sartre: “all human endeavours are doomed to failure.” Tony Blair and John Major join the EU Referendum fray today with even more nightmarish complications for those hoping for a quick and easy Brexit - like having to renegotiate the whole Northern Ireland peace process while dealing with the possible dissolution of the United Kingdom with another Scotland Independence referendum leaving us rebuilding Hadrian’s...

Our MPs have just finished their inquiry into flooding and concluded that a “proactive approach to flooding is needed”. The report published this morning by the Environmental Audit Committee exposed the Government’s knee-jerk reaction to flooding. During the last Parliament funding was cut just before floods, only to be "increased" after the floods. The funding has fluctuated year by year. The Committee has demanded an action plan from the Government. Beavers should be part of that plan. Earlier this year, just one month after...