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Facebook to pay UK media millions to licence news stories

Social network agrees deal with mainstream outlets in face of government crackdown on its dominance of advertising

Facebook is to pay mainstream UK news outlets millions of pounds a year to licence their articles, as the social network faces the threat of a government crackdown over its dominance of online advertising.

Most British newspaper groups have signed up to the programme, under which their articles will appear in a dedicated news section on the site that is due to launch in January.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3o36ayS

Study finds indications of life on Doggerland after devastating tsunamis

Scientists suggest parts of expanse that once connected Britain to mainland Europe survived waves and had settlements

Breaking away from Europe has never been straightforward.

Eight thousand years ago, a series of enormous tsunamis swept through the North Sea and struck the coast of what is now Britain, with devastating effects.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2JqCm02

UK food bank trust says half of users repaying universal credit debts

Food bank users more commonly in debt to government than to friends or payday loan firms

It is now more common for people using food banks to be in debt to the government than to family and friends or payday loan companies, the Trussell Trust has said.

The UK’s biggest food bank network said half of all households visiting food banks struggled to afford essential goods such as food and clothes because they were repaying universal credit debts.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Jdwh7B

Amazon deforestation surges to 12-year high under Bolsonaro

An area seven times larger than Greater London has been lost in what one activist called a ‘humiliating and shameful’ destruction

A vast expanse of Amazon rainforest seven times larger than Greater London was destroyed over the last year as deforestation surged to a 12-year high under Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.

Figures released by the Brazilian space institute, Inpe, on Monday showed at least 11,088 sq km of rainforest was razed between August 2019 and July this year – the highest figure since 2008.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Jdu1x9

Helena Bonham Carter says The Crown should admit to viewers it's a drama

Actor who plays Princess Margaret adds her voice to calls for Netflix to add a disclaimer

Helena Bonham Carter has said The Crown has a “moral responsibility” to tell viewers that it is a drama, rather than historical fact, in the wake of calls for a “health warning” for people watching the series.

The actor, who played Princess Margaret in series three and four of the Netflix hit drama, told an official podcast for the show that there was an important distinction between “our version”, and the “real version”.

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Coronavirus live news: US may begin vaccinations before Christmas; Vietnam sees first case in three months

WHO ‘will do everything’ to find Covid origin; Mexico and Brazil seeing ‘alarming’ case surge; Opec to hold a second day of talks on Tuesday

Samoa’s two positive Covid-19 cases have been declared historical cases and not infectious.

The cases were detected in a 70-year-old who had travelled from Melbourne in Australia, and a sailor repatriated from Italy. Both Samoan citizens arrived in Apia on a repatriation flight on November 13, and subsequently tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

Vietnam reported its first local transmission of Covid-19 in nearly three months on Monday, with officials scrambling to prevent a wider outbreak in the country’s most populous city.

The communist nation was applauded earlier this year for controlling the pandemic with strict restrictions on movement, extensive quarantine measures and a robust track-and-trace regime.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/39yulRF

Newcastle's entire squad in Covid-19 self-isolation after significant outbreak

  • Game with Aston Villa on Friday now in jeopardy
  • Training ground closed until Wednesday at the earliest

Newcastle’s Premier League game at Aston Villa on Friday is in danger of postponement after Steve Bruce’s entire first-team squad were asked to self-isolate on Monday amid a growing Covid-19 outbreak at the north-east club.

The training ground will not reopen until Wednesday at the earliest after a specially ordered set of coronavirus tests on Sunday revealed a significant number of players and staff had recorded positive results.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2KM2p2i

Royal Society of Literature reveals historic changes to improve diversity

Eminent group adds pens of Andrea Levy and Jean Rhys to its collection as it sets out to champion writers of colour

The late Andrea Levy, author of the award-winning Windrush novel Small Island, is to become the first writer of colour to have her pen join the Royal Society of Literature’s historic collection, which includes pens belonging to George Eliot and Lord Byron.

The eminent society, which was founded in 1820, periodically appoints new fellows deemed to have published works of “outstanding literary merit”. Fellows are then invited to sign their names in the society’s roll book, using the pen of a “historically influential” UK writer – either Charles Dickens (although his pen was retired in 2013), TS Eliot, Byron or George Eliot. Now, as the RSL sets out to champion the writers of colour with a series of new appointments and initiatives, it has added Levy to this list, alongside Wide Sargasso Sea author Jean Rhys.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3o62vjD

Environment to benefit from ‘biggest farming shake-up in 50 years’

£1.6bn subsidies for owning land in England to end, with funds going to improve nature

Wildlife, nature and the climate will benefit from the biggest shake-up in farming policy in England for 50 years, according to government plans.

The £1.6bn subsidy farmers receive every year for simply owning land will be phased out by 2028, with the funds used instead to pay them to restore wild habitats, create new woodlands, boost soils and cut pesticide use.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/39nr085

Coronavirus live news: Fauci warns of 'surge upon surge' in US cases after Thanksgiving

Turkey suffers seventh straight day of record deaths; Lebanon to slowly relax restrictions; New York begins reopening schools.

Dr Fauci also said the arrival of vaccines offers a “light at the end of the tunnel”, AP reports. This coming week, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will meet with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to discuss a rollout of the vaccine, he said.

He added that President-elect Joe Biden should focus on distributing vaccines in an “efficient and equitable way.” Fauci also said he planned to push the new administration for a rigorous testing program.

Health care workers will likely be among the first to get the vaccine, with the first vaccinations happening before the end of December, followed by many more in January, February and March, he said.

“So if we can hang together as a country and do these kinds of things to blunt these surges until we get a substantial proportion of the population vaccinated, we can get through this,” Fauci said.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told ABC’s “This Week” that the level of infection in the US. would not “all of a sudden turn around.”

AP: “So clearly in the next few weeks, we’re going to have the same sort of thing. And perhaps even two or three weeks down the line ... we may see a surge upon a surge,” he said.

Fauci also appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where he made similar remarks, adding that it’s “not too late” for people traveling home after Thanksgiving to help curb the virus by wearing masks, staying distant from others and avoiding large groups of people.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3qaTacn

Nearly a third of English hospital trusts exceed first peak of Covid patients

Scientists warn that scrapping or relaxing tier system too quickly could imperil NHS

Nearly a third of England’s hospital trusts have exceeded their first-wave peak of Covid patients undergoing treatment, as scientists warned that relaxing or scrapping the three-tier system too quickly could further hamper the NHS.

Hospitals trusts in South Somerset and Devon treated more than twice as many Covid patients on at least one day last week as they did at the peak of the first wave in spring, Guardian analysis shows. However, because tier decisions are based on a range of data, both areas will go into tier 2 from Thursday.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/37m0aun