United Kingdom

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Sorry, Trolls: UK Won't Give You 'Boaty McBoatface'

Science minister says name shouldn't be 'completely frivolous'

(Newser) - The winning campaign to name the UK's new $300 million research vessel Boaty McBoatface has hit a wall, er, iceberg. Britain's science minister says that while many of the public's suggestions in a naming poll "were imaginative, some were more suitable than others," per Newsweek ...

'Super Gonorrhea' May Go Global, Become Untreatable

Cases are skyrocketing in UK, causing 'huge concern' drugs could stop working altogether

(Newser) - Last year's emergence of so-called "super gonorrhea" in Leeds hasn't ended in the UK city. The STD is now popping up in new British cities including London, and doctors are worried it may spread faster just as it becomes untreatable. Because the STD is so good at...

Lucky Couple Finds Precious Lump of Smelly Whale Vomit

It could get them more than $70K

(Newser) - Good fortune has never smelled so bad. The Mirror reports Gary and Angela Williams found a lump of "floating gold"—more accurately described as whale vomit—Sunday while walking on a British beach. It wasn't too hard to find the ambergris, which is both rare and valuable;...

Pricey Nuptials Give Rise to Weekday Weddings

Costs can be a third cheaper when held on Thursdays instead of Saturdays

(Newser) - Ah, weddings: The chance to celebrate love, commitment ... and the increasingly staggering amount of cash couples are forking over to tie the knot. One trending nod to frugality, however, is the rise of the less costly Thursday wedding. In fact, the Times reports that in the United Kingdom, nearly 22,...

Sam the Dog Got to Space, Needs Help Getting Home

'A school full of sad children' has launched a national search

(Newser) - The search is on for Britain's cuddliest astronaut: Sam the Dog. School children launched the stuffed animal into space—along with a GPS tracker and camera—using a large helium ballon as a class project on Tuesday, Stuff reports. According to the Independent , Sam left Earth behind at nearly...

David Cameron Owned Shares in Dad's Panama Papers Fund

But he says neither he nor his dad did anything wrong

(Newser) - Despite saying in the wake of the Panama Papers leak that he had "no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds," British prime minister David Cameron now admits he held shares in his late father's offshore investment fund, the Guardian reports. Ian Cameron's fund, as detailed...

UK Bans Ad Over Too-Skinny Model

Ban came about after a single complaint

(Newser) - If anyone has doubts that the United Kingdom's Advertising Standards Authority reads its complaint mail, this should put that to rest. Per Fashionista , a lone detractor submitted a grievance to the British ad watchdog about a Gucci ad campaign, and now it's banned in the UK—because of...

Undercover Cops Tricked Terror Suspect Out of His Phone

It was used to convict him Friday

(Newser) - British police went undercover to trick a 25-year-old delivery driver into giving them his cellphone, leading to his conviction on terrorism charges Friday, CNN reports. Back in July, undercover officers posing as company managers showed up at Junead Khan's workplace and asked to see his work records. When they...

UK Guy Jailed After Asking Muslim Woman to 'Explain Brussels'

He's held 'on suspicion of inciting racial hatred'

(Newser) - A partner at a PR agency specializing in social media landed in jail after tweeting about an encounter on a London street following the Brussels attacks. "I confronted a Muslim women [sic] yesterday in croydon," Matthew Doyle wrote Wednesday in a since-deleted tweet. "I asked her to...

Teen Girl's Bleeding Eyes Are Ruining Her Life

And doctors are stumped

(Newser) - Marnie-Rae Harvey isn't a James Bond villain. She's just a typical 17-year-old British woman who happens to regularly bleed from her eyes—as well as her ears, fingernails, tongue, nose, and scalp, Cosmopolitan UK reports. But the really scary thing is no one knows why it's happening....

Woman Raises $16K for Helpful Homeless Man

He took her to a cafe when she was stranded in London

(Newser) - If a homeless man had asked her for spare change before March 3, Nicole Sedgebeer admits she would have turned the other way. Then came "the most eye-opening event in my life." The 21-year-old from Milton Keynes, England, says she missed the last train home from London after...

Filmmakers Ignore Curse, Scan Grave of Shakespeare

Findings to be revealed in Channel 4 documentary

(Newser) - Visitors to the grave of William Shakespeare can't help but notice this to-the-point inscription: "Blessed be the man that spares these stones, and cursed be he that moves my bones," it reads (with the spelling cleaned up). Curse or not, a group of documentary filmmakers has begun...

Facebook to Pay Each UK Worker $1.1M Bonus

Not for purely altruistic reasons, though—it's to save big on its tax bill overseas

(Newser) - Facebook has found a creative way to drastically bring down its tax bill in the UK: Pay each employee who works there a million bucks, NBC News reports. As first noted in the Sunday Times , the company will pay out nearly $397 million in bonuses to UK staffers, which comes...

Company to Female Workers: Take Time Off for Your Period

UK firm hopes its menstrual policy erases stigma about women's natural cycles

(Newser) - When Bex Baxter started seeing women in her office "bent over double" with pain—not from indigestion or appendicitis, but from their monthly menstrual cycles—she knew she had to act, per the Guardian . So the director of Coexist, based in Bristol, England, has decided to implement a "...

Clever Bike Thieves Using This New Trick

They're cutting racks, then hiding the gap with tape

(Newser) - London's bike thieves are getting extra crafty. On Friday, a police officer tweeted photos of a bike rack that had been sliced through and then taped back together to hide the cuts from the city's unsuspecting cyclists, per Boing Boing . Sarah King, a councilor for South Camberwell, tells...

Ex-Zookeeper Cleared of Love-Triangle Assault

A meerkat handler, monkey expert, and llama-keeper, oh my!

(Newser) - Finally, legal closure in a tumultuous zookeeper love triangle across the pond—and perhaps the best lead-in sentence you'll read all week: "A former meerkat expert at London Zoo was cleared Tuesday of assaulting a monkey handler in a love spat over a llama-keeper" is how the AP...

Cops: Girls Fatally Beat Woman, Post Snapchat Pics

Grisly trial is under way in the UK

(Newser) - At around 7:15pm on Dec. 8, 2014, prosecutors say two girls who were then 13 and 14 let themselves into the unlocked home of a woman in the UK, a woman known as an alcoholic who sometimes bought liquor and cigarettes for underage teens. At 7:30pm, the woman,...

Lost Tolkien Poems Found in School Annual

Christmas poem, love poem from 1936 'overwhelmed' UK principal who found them

(Newser) - In August, a previously unseen JRR Tolkien retelling of a 19th-century Finnish epic was published. Now the world will get to experience two other lost Tolkien gems: a pair of poems the Lord of the Rings author penned for an English student publication in 1936, the New York Times reports....

Hot Drinks May Have 3 Times the Sugar of a Coke

UK health group finds chains' hot flavored beverages are loaded with sugar

(Newser) - Have some hot beverage with your sugar. That's the roundabout finding of a UK health advocacy organization that discovered hot flavored drinks served by chains like Starbucks, McDonald's, and Dunkin' Donuts can contain a "shocking" amount of sugar—sometimes up to 25 teaspoons per serving, or more...

Mouse Found Dead in 155-Year-Old Trap

 Mouse Found Dead 
 in 155-Year-Old Trap 
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Mouse Found Dead in 155-Year-Old Trap

Rodent got caught in Victorian mousetrap on display in museum

(Newser) - When Colin Pullinger & Sons patented its "Perpetual Mouse Trap" in 1861, the company boasted the device would "last a lifetime"—and it wasn't kidding. One of the antiquated models on display at the University of Reading's Museum of English Rural Life ended up trapping...

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