God save the Queen and God bless America – God is a figure that is nowhere but everywhere at the same time. But that is slowly changing in the UK as it increasingly becomes more secular. A British Social Attitudes survey revealed that 53 per cent of adults had no religious affiliation. The study showed only 3 per cent of adults under 24 identify as Anglican and 5 per cent identify as Catholic. The numbers continue to change when looking at young people and religion.

It's official: The British government's plan for leaving the European Union will be bad for the economy. The government published a report Wednesday that outlines the economic costs associated with a range of Brexit scenarios. The Bank of England followed later in the day with its own assessment. The United Kingdom would be worse off under all scenarios studied by the government. Officials did not estimate the precise impact of the deal Prime Minister Theresa May has negotiated with the European Union, but even in the best case it too will mean a weaker economy than remaining in the bloc.

Due to land in 2021, the ExoMars rover will be the first of its kind to travel across the Martian surface and drill down to determine if evidence of life is buried underground. Dr Graham Turnock, Chief Executive, UK Space Agency said: After the Earth, Mars is the most habitable planet in the Solar System, so it’s a perfect destination to explore the possibility of life on other planets, as well as the history of our own.

Emmanuel Macron has branded the leaders of the campaign for Brexit “liars”, in an extraordinary attack at the close of the Salzburg summit. The Leave victory was “pushed by those who predicted easy solutions,” the French president said, adding: “Those people are liars. They left the next day so they didn’t have to manage it.”

Russian diplomats held secret talks in London last year with people close to Julian Assange to assess whether they could help him flee the UK, the Guardian has learned. A tentative plan was devised that would have seen the WikiLeaks founder smuggled out of Ecuador’s London embassy in a diplomatic vehicle and transported to another country. One ultimate destination, multiple sources have said, was Russia, where Assange would not be at risk of extradition to the US. The plan was abandoned after it was deemed too risky.

Launching a People's Manifesto for Wildlife, broadcaster Chris Packham said the UK is witnessing a "mass extinction in our own backyards" due to a lack of regard for the environment - such as building roads and houses through natural habitats and using pesticides in farming. A staggering 38,000 mountain hares have been killed on hunting estates across Scotland, and the manifesto warns the animals could become extinct in our lifetime.

A 13-year-old boy with a severe dairy allergy died after a schoolmate allegedly chased him with cheese and threw it down his T-shirt, an inquest has heard. Karanbir Cheema, from Greenford, west London, suffered a “serious allergic reaction” and was left “gasping for air”, ITV News reports. After going into anaphylactic shock, he fell unconscious and was rushed to hospital by paramedics, where he died ten days later.

Jeremy Corbyn has said he will back giving the British people a final say on Brexit in a new referendum if party members vote for it at Labour’s conference this week. The Labour leader said that while he had not called for it up to now he had been elected to “empower” members and would not “walk away from it” if they demanded a new vote.

A teenager has been shot dead in the second youth murder in London within the space of 24 hours. Police were called to reports of a shooting in Walthamstow shortly after 11pm on Saturday night. The 19-year-old was driven by friends to a northeast London hospital, where he was pronounced dead around half an hour later. Officers believe they know his identity, but await formal identification and confirmation that next of kin have been informed.

A 13-year-old-boy in Bradford drove a stolen car at speeds of up to 100mph as he attempted to give police the slip, an officer said.The boy was behind the wheel of a Volkswagen Golf which was taken during a burglary in Shipley, near Bradford, Pc Benjamin Pearson said.

Britain's opposition Labour Party will "will recognise a Palestinian state as soon as we take office," says leader Jeremy Corbyn while speaking Wednesday at the annual party conference. “The continuing occupation, the expansion of illegal settlements and the imprisonment of Palestinian children are an outrage,” Corbyn said, while explaining Labour backs a two-state solution to the conflict.

The accusation that loyal customers are being "ripped off" for mobile, broadband, savings, home insurance and mortgage deals is to be investigated by the competition body. It follows a super-complaint from Citizens Advice, which says customers who stick with their supplier are losing a total of £4.1bn a year. That amounts to an average of £877 per person, the charity said. It added that elderly and vulnerable people are disproportionately affected.

Teenagers who enticed a pet cat out from underneath a car before setting a dog on it have been sent death threats after their identities were revealed online. The two boys - who cannot be named for legal reasons - have been subject to scores of violent threats on social media after appearing in court charged with causing the "disturbing" and "sinister" death of a cat .

Restaurants will be legally barred from keeping tips from staff under plans to be announced by Theresa May on Monday. The move follows a public outcry in 2015, when it emerged that many High Street chains routinely took up to 10% of tips paid by credit and debit card. Most chains have since stopped this practice, typically charging a much lower fee of 2.5% on tips paid by card.

An outspoken former Conservative party donor has said he is prepared to go to prison to keep a giant “Bollocks to Brexit” poster above his London office after he was told to remove it by his local council. Charlie Mullins, the founder of Pimlico Plumbers, accused Lambeth council of interfering with his freedom of speech and succumbing to people’s sensitivities over a word that was proven in a Sex Pistols case in 1977 not to be obscene.

A teenage girl who did not know where she was and called 999 to report that a man had raped her was found after police deployed a drone equipped with a thermal imaging camera. The 16-year-old called emergency services in the early hours of Saturday to say she was on land somewhere in Boston, Lincolnshire, with her attacker.

There was medical cannabis news out today in the UK. It emerged that within the next month, it will be available on prescription. Currently cannabis-derived medicines are only prescribed in exceptional circumstances and a medical panel has to agree. The latest move represents a shift in the tone and the procedure by the government's Home Office.

A woman has been jailed for four months after pleading guilty to inciting the killing of her boyfriend, who was murdered by her former partner. Sarah Bramley, 29, revelled in the drama of having David Saunders and Michael Lawson vying for her attention because she had “lost her moral compass”, her barrister told Teesside crown court. She sent an intimate photograph of herself performing a sex act on Lawson to Saunders, her former partner, “tipping him over the edge”, the court heard.

The heartbroken mum of a teenager who took his own life after being accused of rape before the report was withdrawn has been found hanged in her family home. The family of grief-stricken Karin Cheshire, 55, said she 'could not see a future' without son Jay Cheshire, 17, who took his own life after allegations of rape were made against him. The complaint was withdrawn after two weeks but were said to have deeply affected Jay.

A BRITISH paedophile who campaigned for child sex to be legalised is being sued by five of his victims for damages following claims they were sexually exploited by him, in the first case of its kind. The five victims will give evidence to the High Court via a video link about the abuse they suffered at the hands of Douglas Slade while he was living in the Philippines.

A man says he blames the Government for the death of his partner who slipped into a diabetic coma after her benefits were stopped. Amy Driver, 27, was given a four-week sanction after she missed one appointment at the Job Centre due to a hospital appointment, Clifford Watson claims. Clifford, who cannot work due to a disability, said the halt in their income meant she couldn’t afford to eat properly – which triggered the low blood sugar attack.

Detectives have obtained new DNA evidence they hope may help solve the murder of a woman who was stabbed to death as she walked her dog in Cornwall 20 years ago. Police are painstakingly tracing men who may have been on the Roseland Peninsula when Lyn Bryant was murdered, an incident room has been opened and a £10,000 reward offered for information leading to the killer’s conviction. Bryant’s family has also launched an appeal for information and said the emergence of the forensic evidence gives them hope the mystery, which cast a shadow over the community, can be solved.

Farmers and conservationists have not always seen eye-to-eye in the UK. However, hopes of finding common ground may now come from an unlikely place—Brexit. Yes, you heard me correctly, one of the most divisive changes to the European political landscape may help bring UK farmers and conservationists together.

Makers of smart home devices are to be encouraged to make their gadgets secure against hack attacks. The UK has published a voluntary code of practice for manufacturers that shows how they can proof their creations against common attacks. It aims to stop gadgets being hijacked and used to mount cyber-attacks - and stamp out designs that let cyber-thieves steal data. Two companies, HP and Hive Centrica, have already agreed to follow the code.

London police have issued a warning to women not to wear headphones while out alone after a string of sexual assaults.

A 100-year-old woman has married her 74-year-old partner after 30 years together. Norah and Malcolm Yates tied the knot at a hotel near their home in Prestatyn, Denbighshire, on Tuesday. The bride, a former school cook, had been twice married and widowed when she met divorced Mr Yates at a dance in the 1980s and they have "been together ever since".

The UK government has thrown its weight behind the creation of the world’s biggest environmental sanctuary, covering a huge swathe of the Antarctic ocean. The massive 1.8m sq km reserve – five times the size of Germany – would ban all fishing in a vast area of the Weddell Sea and parts of the Antarctic peninsula, safeguarding species including penguins, killer whales, leopard seals and blue whales.

Private media firms such as Netflix and Amazon could be subsidised with public money originally taken from the BBC’s budget to pay for rural broadband, the public broadcaster has claimed. The government finalised plans for the scheme’s £60m surplus to be handed to private production companies on Friday. The money is intended to help with the production of children’s TV, programming in the UK’s indigenous languages and commercial radio.

Much like making craft beer, yeast enzymes can be used to create THC and CBD, the active chemicals found in marijuana. Unlike other modern high growth industries, the pot business doesn’t require a doctorate in science, or even a college degree. Much of the economic hype which surrounds the industry depends on it remaining an agricultural product. But it might not always be that way.

Be sure to disable passive entry and enable PIN to drive on your Tesla, or this might happen. A Tesla owner who recorded thieves stealing his Model S by hacking the passive entry system has published the video on YouTube so we can all watch (and learn). It shows the crooks using a tablet to apparently capture the passive signal from his keyfob, then using the data to open the vehicle. Amusingly, the pair didn't drive off as quickly as they could have simply because they couldn't figure out how to detach the charging cable (hint: there's a button).

Almost 3,000,000,000 single use cups are set to be used in the UK this year – and just one in 25 of them will get recycled. New figures – buried in a report released on budget day – reveal the shocking scale of the problem despite pledges to tackle the mountain of waste heading for landfill. Campaigners have accused the government of ‘sitting on its hands’ and doing little to combat the issue despite growing public outrage.

Evidence has come to light of a deal to evict WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The deal involves collusion from several countries. And if the plan goes ahead, it could see Assange forced out of the embassy within weeks or even days.

A heart patient who died after a robot performed complicated surgery said the man would have had a “99 per cent” chance of survival if a human had operated. The doctor leading the surgery on Stephen Pettitt, who died after a "catalogue of errors: was not trained enough to use the robot and had only practised using it on a simulator, an inquest heard. In February 2015, the father-of-three, 69, was the first person in the UK to undergo robotic mitral valve surgery.

Due to booming population, siblings will no longer have the privilege of getting a priority in school places. It has been announced by the Wandsworth council in London that it will be removing the rule that gives an automatic place to the pupil’s brothers and sisters even if the family has moved out

UK based mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse announced that it is planning to launch its own mobile network. The retailer promised an increased contract flexibility and greater access to free data roaming with the best value 4G network in the UK market. The upcoming network by Carphone Warehouse will be called as iD …Share the joy