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.

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.

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".

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Thousands of people have signed onto a petition calling on the U.K. government to ban former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon from entering the country.

In southern Wales’ Vale of Glamorgan, archaeologists flying over a prehistoric settlement they had previously studied got a surprise: the ghostly outline of a Roman villa on the ground inside the older settlement’s boundaries. “We know of Roman villas built within prehistoric settlements elsewhere,” the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales wrote in a published statement, “but this is a new example.”

An artwork featuring a list of the 34,361 refugees and migrants who have lost their lives trying to reach Europe has been destroyed in Liverpool. The list, which the Guardian published as a special supplement in June, was produced for World Refugee Day. It was posted on hoardings outside a building site in Liverpool’s Chinatown as part of Liverpool Biennial art festival.

Disproportionate British newspaper coverage of Ukip helped to increase support for the party, according to a new academic study, amid a growing debate on the role the media plays in boosting the popularity of anti-immigrant political parties. Political scientists at the University of Southampton investigated whether increased media coverage of Ukip...

Creationism cannot be taught as a valid scientific theory in any free school or academy, the government has said. The move, which came in a little noticed document last week, marks a significant victory for secular campaigners, who have long fought to ensure the freedom granted to free schools and academies does not allow religious ideas to be taught in science classes.

Would you eat dog meat? UK law says that you can't buy or sell dog meat, but if you humanely kill a dog you own, you can eat it. But there have been calls to make it illegal, including from SNP MP Dr Lisa Cameron who believes the public would be "right behind legislation calling for a ban".

Apple has its Lightning connector and everyone else has USB. But EU regulators are considering whether they need to force a common standard for phone chargers. The idea is to cut down on the 51,000 tons of old chargers and cables thrown away each year. Way back in 2009, the European Commission pressured Apple and 13 other companies to work toward a common charging standard by 2011. All the other signatories gave up their proprietary plugs and switched to USB.

Men and women in England will be offered bowel cancer testing from the age of 50 as ministers backed plans intended to improve early detection. A UK National Screening Committee evidence review this week recommended everyone from 50 to 74 should be sent the home test kits, which detect cancer markers in a small faecal sample.

People with signs of the disease are failing to act, with many worrying they will waste a doctor’s time, a new survey reveals. Despite discovering a potential symptom of cancer, half the UK population would not seek medical help with many too afraid that they may be wasting a doctor’s time by raising it. In addition, one in four people would not bother having a symptom examined for fear of what the doctor might find, according to a new survey by Populus.

The government has vowed to end rough sleeping on England's streets by 2027. It has promised £100m "to help people turn their lives around", including support for mental health and addictions, and funding for housing. Homelessness has been on the rise for the past seven years, with around 4,750 people estimated to be sleeping rough on any given night in England in 2017.

More than one in four households have no emergency savings pot, a survey has suggested. Some 27 per cent of people in the UK said that, excluding pensions and insurance policies, they have no savings they can quickly access if needed. The UK figures are slightly higher than the European average at 26 per cent, according to the ING International Survey of 15 countries.

Weeks of dry, hot weather have exposed the outlines of several archeological sites across the U.K., dating back thousands of years. Drier soil conditions have allowed archeologists to capture aerial photographs of previously hidden features from ancient times, to reveal farms, burial monuments, ditches, walls and vegetation patterns, or cropmarks. The patterns of these structures can be seen from the air as the vegetation dies back in dry conditions.

There is high public support for using the tax system to reduce waste from single-use plastics, the Treasury says. A consultation on how taxes could tackle the rising problem and promote recycling attracted 162,000 responses. Treasury Minister Robert Jenrick said the government was looking at "smart, intelligent incentives" to get plastic producers to take responsibility.

The UK will investigate allegations that British World War Two wrecks in Asia have been targeted by scavengers, the defence secretary says. Gavin Williamson said he was "very concerned" to hear claims that four shipwrecks off the Malaysian and Indonesian coasts had been looted. The Mail on Sunday said HMS Tien Kwang, HMS Kuala, HMS Banka and SS Loch Ranza were targeted for their metal.

Couples raising two children while working full-time on the minimum wage are falling £49 a week short of being able to provide their family with a basic, no-frills lifestyle, research has found. The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) called for an increase in the government’s “national living wage” to allow families to have an acceptable standard of living. Its Cost of a Child report, published on Monday, showed an 11% weekly shortfall for a couple raising two children at the point they are aged three and seven.

A sexually transmitted disease which causes the genitals to erupt into flesh-eating ulcers has been detected for the first time in the UK and it's making a comeback in other countries too. Usually found in far-flung tropical countries, there have been no previous cases of the rare STI Donovanosis recorded in the UK. That is until now.