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Apple accused of breaking EU law over App Store sales fees

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iPhone and iPad maker distorts competition for streaming services such as Spotify, says commissioner

Apple has been accused of breaking EU law by charging high fees and setting unfair rules on those selling their products in its App Store, resulting typically in a 30% price hike for paying customers.

Margrethe Vestager, the European commissioner for competition, said the preliminary view was that Apple had distorted competition in the music streaming market by abusing its dominant position and role as a “gatekeeper” to the 1.8m apps in its store.

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England to meet Northern Ireland in 2023 Women’s World Cup qualifying

News Round-up -

  • Draw made for finals in New Zealand and Australia
  • Wales in group with France; Scotland to face Spain

England will play a Northern Ireland team aiming to reach a second major tournament finals after they were drawn together in a qualifying group for the 2023 World Cup in New Zealand and Australia.

The two sides met in a February friendly at St George’s Park for England’s first game in almost a year and a hat-trick from Ellen White helped the home team to a 6-0 win. Northern Ireland recently qualified for next summer’s Euros with a 4-1 aggregate win over Ukraine in the qualifying play-offs.

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Met police officer convicted of belonging to neo-Nazi terror group jailed

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Benjamin Hannam, 22, given prison sentence of four years and four months

A man who became the first serving British police officer to be convicted of a terrorism offence has been jailed for four years and four months.

Benjamin Hannam, who was found guilty this month of membership of the banned neo-Nazi group National Action, worked as a Metropolitan police probationary officer for nearly two years before his details were found on a leaked database from an extreme rightwing forum.

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Polar classification scheme sheds light on bold expeditions that never were

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System aims to uncover whether unsupported crossings had no human help and verify accuracy of record-breaking feats


“Polar exploration,” said Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the companion of Capt Robert Falcon Scott, who later found the Antarctic explorer’s body, “is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time that has yet been devised.”

But while previous generations of polar travellers devised their own rules for their gruelling journeys, a new certification scheme has been launched after growing controversy over allegedly inflated claims of exploits at the Earth’s two poles.

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Captain Sir Tom Moore’s family kick off birthday fundraising weekend

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Family say it has been ‘incredibly emotional’ marking what would have been his 101st birthday

Captain Sir Tom Moore’s family said they felt “incredibly emotional” on what would have been the war veteran’s 101st birthday on Friday, but were pleased to see his legacy going strong as they launched a fundraising weekend in his honour.

The family kicked off the Captain Tom 100 Challenge at Lord’s cricket ground on Friday morning, encouraging people to raise money for charity by attempting feats based on the number 100.

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Russian state watchdog adds Navalny network to terrorism database

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Move comes as Kremlin is expected to outlaw opposition leader’s nationwide political movement

Russia’s state financial watchdog has added Alexei Navalny’s network of regional headquarters to a terrorism watchlist as the Kremlin appears poised to outlaw the opposition leader’s nationwide political movement.

“Navalny headquarters” appeared on Friday on a searchable database of terrorist and extremist groups published by the state watchdog Rosfinmonitoring, which allows the government to close its bank accounts.

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My son has a cool new haircut and suddenly he can’t stand me | Romesh Ranganathan

News Round-up -

He came back from the hairdresser looking all edgy and teenagery, signalling the start of my years as an embarrassing dad

It’s been very exciting getting haircuts, hasn’t it? I genuinely feel like my car goes faster and better when I have filled it up with petrol, and that’s how I felt when I got my hair cut: I was immediately more confident, I had a swagger in my step and I was ready to go back out into the world with my levels of sexiness restored to their usual intensity.

Our children have had to suffer the most. The experience of getting them to sit down for a trim has been akin to trying to settle the rowdiest of sheep for shearing, with the sheep constantly bleating about wanting to get back on to their PlayStations. After the trauma of that, they go to a mirror and collect more evidence that we, as parents, are the enemy. I can admit this now: every haircut we have given the boys in the last year has been absolutely unacceptable, and I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to them.

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‘Snowdon’ may have its own beauty, but Yr Wyddfa is the name I’ll be using | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

News Round-up -

Language is political, and the English suppression of local placenames should be resisted in Wales, just as in Ireland

It has been well over a year now since I last laid eyes on Yr Wyddfa, the mountain that presided over my childhood, and which the English call Snowdon. I could draw the shape of that peak with my eyes closed. Jan Morris called it a “dream-view” and an “ideal landscape”, writing that “it is as though everything is refracted by the pale, moist quality of the air, so that we see the mountain through a lens, heightened or dramatised”.

I daydream about Yr Wyddfa, mostly of swimming in the clear, cold river that we would walk up to on hot days – a secret spot, known only locally (when I Googled the name of the pool, which is Welsh, nothing came up, and I will keep it that way). Less romantic is the last time I climbed the mountain, where at the summit the inevitable queue awaited us. Yr Wyddfa is a victim of its own popularity, though you could argue that it has kept the surrounding mountains wonderfully empty of tourists.

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Edwin Poots tipped to succeed Arlene Foster as DUP leader

News Round-up -

NI agriculture minister, a young Earth creationist, thought to have been key figure in toppling of Foster

The Northern Ireland agriculture minister, Edwin Poots, is expected to replace Arlene Foster as leader of the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) after winning swift endorsements to his candidacy.

The Stormont assembly member is so far the only candidate to declare and appeared to gain momentum on Friday.

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Anxious unionists in little mood to celebrate Northern Ireland centenary

News Round-up -

In Enniskillen for a long time, the unionists kept winning. Now the feeling is of Britishness being lost

Covered up and boxed in a storage vault in the town of Enniskillen, two historic oil paintings gathered dust. King William III commissioned the portraits of himself and Queen Mary after he routed Catholic forces in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, a turning point in Irish history that established Protestant ascendance.

Unionists revere King Billy, also known as William of Orange, as a hero who saved their settler ancestors. The portraits used to gaze down from Enniskillen town hall, a reminder of their link to the crown, until the council voted to remove them in 2002.

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Staff in UK riverside venues to be trained to help stop people drowning

News Round-up -

RNLI and firefighters to teach staff what to do in an emergency, as customers return after lockdown

People working in pubs, cafes and other venues near to rivers are to be given special training to help stop people drowning amid concerns for customers flocking back as the Covid lockdown eases.

Firefighters are being trained by the RNLI to go into businesses and show staff how to get people out of the water safely. The move comes after two people died in the Thames within days of each other last week.

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