Troll Trials
BRITISH INTERNET TROLLS ARE GOING TO GET HARSHER SENTENCES
Abuse someone online and you could end up with a two-year jail sentence
(Illustration by Cei Willis)
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Justice Secretary Chris Grayling announced that the maximum jail sentence for sending online abuse will be quadrupled from six months to two years under new laws.
Grayling said the new legislation was introduced to “take a stand against a baying cyber-mob”.
Speaking to the Mail, he said, “These internet trolls are cowards who are poisoning our national life… no one would permit such venom in person, so there should be no place for it on social media. That is why we are determined to quadruple the current six-month sentence.”
Pay Rise Protests
TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE MARCHED FOR BETTER PAY
Union members are angry that average wages in the UK have fallen
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Nearly 100,000 public sector workers and members of Unite, Unison, the National Union of Teachers, the Communication Workers Union, the Royal College of Nurses and Equity took to the streets on Saturday to demand a pay rise from the government.
The organisers of the march, the Trades Union Council, said that average wages in Britain had declined by up to £50 a week since 2008.
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said, “Pay has fallen off a cliff and shows little sign of recovering any time soon. Ordinary households are not sharing in the recovery and are facing their seventh consecutive year of real wage cuts.”
Last week, 400,000 health workers – including nurses, paramedics, midwives and hospital porters – went on strike after the government refused to give NHS workers a 1 percent pay rise, representing the largest industrial action of health workers in 30 years and the first time ever that midwives had gone on strike.
Protest Clashes
STUDENTS AND POLICE FOUGHT IN HONG KONG
Pro-democracy demonstrations are getting increasingly violent
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Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrators clashed with police on Friday and Saturday nights, despite planned talks between protesters and city officials in the coming week.
On Friday night, upwards of 10,000 protesters flooded the streets of the Mong Kok district, trying to re-occupy an intersection cleared by the police earlier in the day.
According to the police, 33 were arrested and scores of protesters and police were injured.
On early Sunday morning, the police launched a baton charge on crowds in Nathan Road, where protesters have set up camps, successfully pushing the demonstrators off an intersection they were blocking.
Talks are supposed to take place between Carrie Lam, the chief secretary of Hong Kong’s government, and the demonstrators on Tuesday.
Rising Tensions
SWEDEN SEARCHED FOR A SUSPECTED RUSSIAN SUBMARINE OFF ITS COAST
They’re worried about some “foreign underwater activity”
A Russian submarine (Photo via)
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Swedish military personnel have been scouring the waters off Stockholm this weekend for what has officially been described as “foreign underwater activity”.
Swedish media claim that foreign underwater activity could be a Russian submarine.
The Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet said that the hunt began after a radio transmission in Russian was picked up by authorities coming from the waters off Stockholm, adding that there had been visual sightings of a “human-made object” in the waters.
The military mobilisation comes at a time of rising tensions between Russia and the Nordic and Baltic States, most of them EU members, over Russia’s involvement in Ukraine.
Reuters reported that the mobilisation of Swedish personnel in the Baltic was the largest since the Cold War.
Sexpeditions
A PORN STAR STARTED HER ‘SEX TOUR’ OF THE UK
Rebecca More will be having sex with 20 competition winners
(Photo via)
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British porn star Rebecca More started her “sex tour” of the UK, which involves her having sex with 20 competition winners in a lorry called the “fuckbus”.
The tour – which reportedly had over 2,000 applicants – is all being filmed for a Television X show, with director Macondo describing it as a “once in a lifetime opportunity”.
More started her sex junket in Birmingham, which didn’t go down very well with local MP Khalid Mahmood.
“That’s not the right message for the city to send out, and it creates a negative image of Birmingham,” he said. “We can’t confront what happens in a van, but I would urge the local authority to ensure that it doesn’t in any way affect our communities and young people.”
The tour continues throughout October.