News

Blackpool has been hit by four earthquakes just days after fracking got underway in the area. The controversial drilling technique designed to recover gas and oil from shale rock has been met with vehement opposition in the North West after previous attempts to drill caused similar earth tremors. But extraction companies were given the go-ahead to “proceed with caution” two years after the last attempt, despite protests led by Vivienne Westwood and other anti-fracking campaigners. Gas firm Cuadrilla started drilling...

More than 4,000 pupils have already been stay at home after ten schools in the east London borough closed following outbreaks of the UK's most venomous spider.

The people were standing on the railway line and watching the Ravana idol burn while the train came and mowed them down

Former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Nick Clegg has landed a top job as head of Facebook’s global affairs and communications team. The ex Deputy PM will take up the role to help the social media giant navigate EU regulatory challenges as Zuckerberg looks to cosy up to Brussels. According to BBC sources the Facebook founder was personally involved in the recruitment and may have spent “months” trying to woo him over. Clegg will become the most senior addition to Facebook’s tight-knit...

The Arctic is turning green as areas that have been frozen for tens of thousands of years are now thawing, warns new research. The study shows that shrubs are flourishing in the tundra and increasing the rate that layers of frozen ground - known as permafrost - are melting. Researchers found that the greenery traps snow and aids the thawing process. The team from Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of Alaska Fairbanks and Oak Ridge National Laboratory dug snow pits...

A Tory backbencher has said he wouldn’t vote for his own government if he wasn’t an MP in an explosive interview with The House magazine. Johnny Mercer branded the current administration a “shit show” and said he would not have stood as an MP if the situation was like it is now". He argued his party is being “openly ridiculed” and suggested it has nothing to offer voters beyond Brexit. In a scathing attack of the Prime Minister he labelled...

Campaigners have written to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to provide it with evidence that they say they have compiled that toxic substances in passenger airplane cabins are damaging the health of air crew and passengers. The former flight staff say that they are submitting scientific evidence and testimonies of hundreds of people whose health has suffered to the court in the Hague in The Netherlands. “Cabin air, knowingly polluted by highly toxic, thermally degraded substances, is in...

The organisers behind Lovebox Festival wants to hold two new events at Wanstead Flats in east London next year, but could be thwarted by the local population of skylarks.

Chuka Umunna is in line to get paid £65,000 a year to chair a new centrist think tank for just 12 hours a month. The Labour MP announced this month he will be heading up the advisory board of Progressive Centre UK, which has the “aim of connecting progressives from across the UK with the latest ideas and experience from across the globe”. But according to Buzzfeed News reports, his work will come at a cost of £5,420 a month...