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  • Meghan in talks for role in Netflix series The Gentlemen, BBC understands

    Meghan in talks for role in Netflix series The Gentlemen, BBC understands

    Meghan Markle Weighs Acting Comeback as Family Relocation to Cotswolds Takes Shape

    Constantvpn.com – The Cotswolds, a patchwork of limestone villages and rolling farmland in south-west England, may soon host an unusual dual residency: a royal-adjacent household and a Netflix production crew. Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, is reportedly in early-stage negotiations to take on a role in the streaming platform’s comedy series The Gentlemen, a development that would mark her first substantial return to acting since she stepped away from the profession following her 2018 marriage into the British royal family.

    The timing is not coincidental. Prince Harry and Meghan are understood to be preparing to relocate from their American base to a private, non-royal residence outside London later this month, with the Cotswolds specifically cited as the area where they intend to settle. Much of the filming for the two completed seasons of The Gentlemen has already taken place across that same stretch of countryside, meaning the production’s logistical infrastructure and local familiarity with the area are well established.

    The Gentlemen: Ritchie’s Duke-Turned-Drug-Baron Comedy

    Created by filmmaker Guy Ritchie, The Gentlemen is a darkly comic series centred on a duke who finds himself entangled in the world of narcotics. Theo James headlines the cast, while veteran British actors Hugh Bonneville and Vinnie Jones have featured in earlier seasons. The show’s tone blends period-adjacent aristocratic satire with genre thrills, and its production footprint in the Cotswolds has made the region a recurring backdrop for the narrative.

    Details surrounding Meghan’s potential involvement — the nature of the role, the extent of her screen time, and the contractual terms — have not been made public. The discussions remain in their earliest phase, and no confirmation of a casting decision has been issued by the production or by the Duchess’s representatives.

    From Suits to a Decade-Long Pause

    Before entering the royal household, Meghan built a seven-season career on the American legal drama Suits, portraying junior lawyer Rachel Zane. Her final episode aired in 2018, the same year she married Prince Harry in May. At the time of her departure from the show, she framed the decision not as a sacrifice but as a transition:

    “I did not view quitting acting as giving anything up, but rather as a new chapter.”

    That chapter lasted nearly a decade. In recent months, however, she made a brief on-screen reappearance with a cameo as herself in the upcoming comedy Close Personal Friends, a project starring Lily Collins and Brie Larson. A full role in The Gentlemen would represent a considerably deeper re-engagement with the craft.

    Business Ambitions and the As Ever Brand

    A renewed acting career could also serve a commercial purpose. While based in the UK, Meghan is understood to want to broaden the international audience for As Ever, her US-based lifestyle and cooking brand. Screen visibility in a globally distributed Netflix title would provide a platform that purely domestic marketing channels cannot match, potentially accelerating the brand’s reach beyond North American consumers.

    The Move Back: Logistics, Schooling, and Royal Status

    The couple’s planned relocation later this month has been confirmed through multiple channels. They intend to occupy a private residence outside London — explicitly not a royal palace or official property — and their two children, Prince Archie (seven) and Princess Lilibet (five), are enrolled to begin at a British school in September. Neither Harry nor Meghan currently has plans to resume formal duties as working members of the royal family, a status they relinquished in 2020.

    The decision follows a July visit during which Harry, Meghan, and their children travelled to Highgrove House in Gloucestershire to see King Charles III. It was the first occasion in more than four years that the King had met his grandchildren face to face, and the couple’s first joint trip to Britain since 2022. The visit appeared to ease long-standing tensions and set the stage for a more permanent presence in the country.

    Security Reassessment Underway

    A longer-term UK residence immediately raises questions about publicly funded protection. When the Sussexes ceased being working royals in 2020 and moved to the United States, their British security arrangements were downgraded, and they have since financed their own protective details abroad. Now that a permanent UK base is being established, the Royal and VIP Executive Committee (Ravec) — an independent body overseen by the Home Office — must revisit its earlier determinations. Previous security frameworks were predicated on the assumption that the couple would not reside in Britain on a permanent basis, meaning a fresh assessment of threat levels, resource allocation, and cost-sharing is required before any new arrangements can be formalised.

    What Comes Next

    For now, the acting negotiations remain unconfirmed, the relocation date is set for later this month, and the children’s school term begins in September. Whether Meghan steps in front of a camera in the Cotswolds — the same landscape where her family will soon live — or whether the discussions stall, will become clear in the coming weeks. What is already settled is that the couple’s centre of gravity is shifting back to Britain, and with it, a constellation of practical, financial, and constitutional questions that have been deferred for five years.

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  • ‘We have more work to do’, says Canada negotiator as US trade deadline looms

    ‘We have more work to do’, says Canada negotiator as US trade deadline looms

    Midnight Deadline Pressures Mount as Ottawa and Washington Race to Close Trade Framework

    Constantvpn.com – With the clock ticking toward a midnight cutoff set by the White House, Canadian trade minister Dominic LeBlanc departed a marathon session in Washington on Friday evening with a message that left little room for celebration: the work was unfinished. After roughly eight hours of face-to-face talks with United States trade representative Jamieson Greer and other senior negotiators — one of the longest single sessions of the entire negotiation — LeBlanc told reporters that his team would keep pushing “up until the last minute.”

    “Our job is not finished,” LeBlanc said, adding that negotiators “have more work to do.”

    The stakes of that final push are considerable. Failure to lock in a tentative agreement before the deadline would expose a broad swath of Canadian exports to a fresh tranche of American tariffs, compounding the trade disruption already weighing on manufacturers, farmers, and exporters across the country.

    What the Framework Appears to Contain

    The full text of the proposed arrangement had not been released publicly as of Friday evening, but details that surfaced through multiple media outlets pointed to a partial rollback of the punitive duties imposed earlier in the year. Under the leaked parameters, Washington would cut tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium from 50 percent to 25 percent, and reduce duties on Canadian-built automobiles from 25 percent to 15 percent. Those figures, while still substantial, represent a meaningful step back from the worst-case scenario that had rattled Canadian industry for months.

    Beyond metals and vehicles, the framework reportedly involves Canada restoring the sale of American alcoholic beverages in its retail channels — a concession that requires buy-in from provincial governments, since liquor distribution falls under provincial jurisdiction. In exchange, Ottawa is said to be weighing expanded market access for American dairy producers and the removal of retaliatory tariffs it had levied on US goods. Canada’s dairy sector, long protected by supply-management rules, sits squarely in the crosshairs of the American negotiating position.

    Trump Signals Momentum, Pauses New Duties

    Hours before the deadline, President Donald Trump declined to confirm that a definitive pact had been struck but characterised the talks as “moving along.” In remarks to reporters on Friday, he framed the negotiation as part of a broader reset of North American trade relationships.

    “We should be able to have a deal with Canada. We’re also starting on a new deal with Mexico. A much better deal for the United States. I only make good deals,” Trump told reporters.

    Simultaneously, the White House announced a three-day pause on new tariffs directed at Canada, effectively buying the negotiators a short window to close remaining gaps without the immediate threat of additional duties landing on Canadian goods.

    Domestic Backlash Tests Carney’s Political Position

    Prime Minister Mark Carney, who campaigned on a tough “elbows-up” posture toward American trade pressure, now faces a fractious coalition of provincial premiers, opposition politicians, and industry leaders who question whether the concessions on the table go too far. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre dismissed any arrangement that embeds “one-sided” tariffs on Canadian industry as simply “a bad deal.”

    “I am concerned with the de-industrialisation of our economy if our key industries pay one-sided tariffs,” Poilievre told reporters on Friday.

    Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew went further, publicly criticising the shape of the talks and calling Trump a “bad person,” while urging Ottawa to “fight” rather than rush into concessions. Quebec Premier Christine Fréchette, whose province hosts a large dairy industry, said on Thursday she was still analysing what the agreement would mean for local farmers before committing to restoring US alcohol sales. Doug Ford, the outspoken premier of Ontario — Canada’s most populous province — had not yet weighed in publicly. By contrast, the premiers of Nova Scotia and the Yukon territory indicated they were prepared to authorise the return of American liquor to provincial shelves.

    At the municipal level, Mayor Matthew Shoemaker of an Ontario city that is home to the country’s second-largest steel producer told the CBC that a deal retaining 25 percent tariffs on the sector “wouldn’t be something to celebrate.” He expressed worry that the emerging terms would not benefit his community.

    Economic Exposure and Public Sentiment

    The economic arithmetic behind the deadline is stark. An analysis published Thursday by Trevor Tombe, a Calgary-based economist, estimated that implementing the threatened additional 50 percent tariff across a wide basket of Canadian goods — from hockey equipment to wine to cement — could cost roughly 90,000 jobs. That figure has intensified pressure on Carney to reach some form of agreement, even as polling data cuts the other way. A survey conducted by Leger found that 56 percent of Canadians wanted their government to maintain a hardline stance rather than make significant concessions to Washington.

    The mixed signals from inside the country give Carney a narrow corridor: concede enough to avert the worst tariffs, but not so much that the deal reads as capitulation to a base that expects toughness. A leaked audio recording, in which Vice-President JD Vance told attendees at a private fundraiser on Wednesday that Carney had tried to “out-tough Donald Trump” in trade talks, suggests the American side is watching for signs of Canadian resolve as closely as it is watching the tariff numbers.

    As Friday night gave way to the final hours before the deadline, the question for Ottawa was no longer whether a deal existed in principle but whether its terms could survive the gauntlet of provincial approval, opposition scrutiny, and public opinion before the midnight cutoff expired.

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  • TikTok to pay $400m to US in one of largest child privacy settlements

    TikTok to pay $400m to US in one of largest child privacy settlements

    TikTok Settles Landmark US Child Privacy Case With $400 Million Payment

    Constantvpn.com – In a move that reshapes the landscape of digital privacy enforcement in America, TikTok has committed to remitting $400 million (approximately £293 million) to the United States government, closing out a federal lawsuit that accused the short-video platform of systematically harvesting personal information from children younger than thirteen. The settlement ranks among the most expensive child-privacy resolutions ever reached in American courts and signals that regulators will continue to pursue social-media giants over how they handle minors’ data.

    The Legal Foundation: COPPA and a Two-Decade-Old Statute

    The case traces back to a complaint filed in 2024 by the Department of Justice during the final months of President Joe Biden’s administration. Prosecutors alleged that TikTok and its parent, ByteDance, amassed “vast amounts of data” from millions of accounts belonging to users under the age of thirteen, in direct contravention of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. COPPA, enacted by Congress in 2000, obligates online services directed at children to obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information and to maintain reasonable safeguards over that data. The statute has become a primary enforcement tool as states and federal agencies tighten their scrutiny of how platforms monetize young users’ attention.

    At the time the suit was initiated, US attorneys stated that more than 170 million teenagers were active on the platform and characterized the application as one “directed to children.” Despite that designation, the government contended the company failed to implement reliable age-verification mechanisms and did not secure parental authorization for underage accounts.

    Financial Terms of the Resolution

    Under the negotiated agreement, TikTok and ByteDance are required to deliver $300 million to the Department of Justice immediately. An additional $100 million becomes payable once the government formally vacates a 2019 consent decree previously entered with the Federal Trade Commission. The decree had governed TikTok’s compliance obligations for several years and its removal effectively resets the regulatory relationship between the company and US privacy authorities.

    The settlement also reaches back to the company’s earlier incarnation. Musical.ly, the predecessor brand that ByteDance acquired before rebranding as TikTok, must pay a $5.7 million penalty for its own COPPA infractions and is obligated to confirm that it obtained parental consent for every user under thirteen. The Justice Department did not announce any operational restrictions or structural mandates beyond the monetary penalties, though it observed that since the lawsuit was filed, the platform has “undergone significant changes” spanning its ownership structure, privacy protocols, and the controls it applies to younger users.

    “Children and parents are better protected today than they were when this case began,” said Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate.

    Where the Settlement Sits Among Other COPPA Penalties

    The $400 million figure places TikTok’s payment well above prior benchmarks. Google’s YouTube division settled a comparable federal action in 2019 for $170 million. Epic Games, maker of Fortnite, paid $275 million in 2022 after regulators found it had collected data from children without adequate parental consent. More recently, Meta — parent of Instagram and Facebook — faces a multi-state action brought by attorneys general in 29 jurisdictions alleging COPPA violations, with potential liabilities that could reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars. A jury trial in that Meta case commenced this week, with prosecutors accusing the company of deliberately targeting child users and extracting commercial benefit from their engagement.

    The China–US Corporate Split and Its Limits

    A critical nuance of the settlement is its geographic scope. Although the lawsuit predates last year’s restructuring that separated TikTok’s American business from its Chinese headquarters, the resolution applies exclusively to the company’s operations based in China. ByteDance, a privately held enterprise most recently valued by investors at roughly $550 billion, retains a 19 percent stake in the now-81 percent US-investor-owned entity that runs the American version of the app.

    The corporate separation itself was the product of intense political pressure. In 2024, President Biden advocated either an outright ban on the platform or a forced divestiture of its US operations. President Donald Trump subsequently endorsed the divestiture path, and the transaction was completed last year. The arrangement leaves ByteDance with a minority financial interest while a consortium of American investors controls day-to-day governance of the US business.

    Broader Implications for Platform Privacy

    The settlement underscores a regulatory trajectory in which child-data protection has moved from a niche compliance concern to a central axis of corporate liability. COPPA’s 2000 framework, originally drafted for a web of email newsletters and early social networks, now underpins multi-hundred-million-dollar enforcement actions against the world’s most valuable technology companies. The fact that TikTok’s payment dwarfs YouTube’s 2019 figure by more than two-fold illustrates both the growth in platform scale and the increasing willingness of US authorities to extract meaningful financial consequences from privacy failures affecting minors.

    For parents and advocates, the resolution offers partial relief: the monetary penalty, the vacated consent decree, and the confirmed parental-consent obligation for Musical.ly-era accounts collectively tighten the guardrails around under-thirteen users. Yet the absence of any announced structural or operational mandates beyond the fine leaves open questions about how aggressively the platform will implement age-verification technology going forward — particularly given that the US and Chinese operations now sit under different ownership and regulatory umbrellas.

    A TikTok spokesperson did not provide comment for this story.

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  • Russian double-tap drone strike kills 16 in Ukrainian mall, officials say

    Russian double-tap drone strike kills 16 in Ukrainian mall, officials say

    Double-Tap Drone Strike on Kryvyi Rih Mall Leaves at Least 16 Dead, Dozens More Missing

    Constantvpn.com – A shopping centre in the industrial city of Kryvyi Rih, located in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, was hit by two successive Russian drone strikes on Friday, killing at least 16 people and wounding roughly 130 others. The attack, which struck during daylight hours, targeted the city’s largest retail complex and left large sections of the building collapsed into rubble. Authorities confirmed that additional victims remained trapped beneath the debris as rescue crews worked through the evening.

    Kryvyi Rih, a city of approximately 600,000 residents built around iron-ore mining and steel production, holds particular personal significance for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was born there. He addressed the nation after the strike, describing the assault as a calculated act of terror aimed not only at civilians but at the first responders rushing to save them.

    The Two-Wave Attack

    The strike unfolded in two distinct phases. The first drone struck the mall, igniting fires and causing structural collapse. Before emergency services could fully reach the scene, a second drone arrived and hit the same structure while it was already ablaze and while rescue workers were on site. Footage verified by independent fact-checkers captured the moment the second drone impacted the burning building.

    This “double-tap” tactic — delivering a follow-up strike while rescuers and bystanders gather at the initial impact site — has become a recurring feature of Russian aerial campaigns against Ukrainian cities. Critics of the approach argue that it converts a single bombing into a compound catastrophe, multiplying casualties among both civilians and the very personnel tasked with saving them.

    “Absolutely cynical and despicable,” Zelensky said of the daytime attack in his hometown, adding that it was carried out in “two waves,” with the second strike deliberately aimed at emergency workers at the scene.

    The Russian Ministry of Defence had not issued a statement commenting on the strike as of Friday evening.

    Rescue Efforts and Rising Toll

    Oleksandr Hanzha, head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional administration, first reported 15 confirmed deaths on Friday evening, noting that two of the victims had died later in hospital after initial injuries. As search-and-rescue operations continued into the night, Hanzha confirmed that emergency workers had pulled one additional body from the rubble, bringing the verified death count to 16.

    He said nine people — including two children — remained unaccounted for inside the collapsed structure. Of the approximately 130 injured, 29 were listed in serious condition. Rescue teams from four other Ukrainian regions were rushed to Kryvyi Rih to assist with excavation and survivor searches. Specially trained psychologists were also dispatched to provide immediate mental-health support to survivors and their families.

    Oleksandr Vilkul, mayor of Kryvyi Rih, described the conditions under which the drones approached the city.

    “There are missing people who are not responding to calls,” the mayor said, adding that the Russian drones had been flying at “extremely low altitudes” and describing the attackers as “animals.”

    Local officials cautioned that the final death toll could climb further as debris is cleared and buried victims are recovered.

    Wider Strikes Across Ukraine

    The Kryvyi Rih mall was not the only target hit on Friday. In the southern Mykolaiv region, four people — three of them children — were killed in separate Russian strikes. Two more deaths were confirmed in the north-eastern Kharkiv region. In the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, a drone detonated near a taxi, injuring three people, according to the regional governor.

    The day before, Kyiv endured one of the heaviest combined missile-and-drone barrages of the war. Seventeen people were killed and more than 40 injured when Russian projectiles struck residential apartment blocks, warehouses, a children’s hospital, and a school across the capital overnight.

    Ukrainian Counterstrikes and the Broader War

    Earlier on Friday, Ukraine’s General Staff announced that it had struck an oil refinery and a military airfield deep inside Russian territory. These operations are part of a sustained Ukrainian campaign, intensified over recent months, aimed at Russian energy infrastructure and at warehouses belonging to Wildberries, the country’s largest online retailer. Kyiv maintains that such facilities are legitimate military-economic targets because they generate revenue that finances Moscow’s war effort.

    The broader conflict traces back to February 2022, when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As of the current phase of the war, Moscow controls roughly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, concentrated in the south-east. The repeated targeting of civilian infrastructure — shopping centres, hospitals, schools, residential towers — has drawn international condemnation and renewed calls for expanded air-defence support to Ukrainian cities.

    For the residents of Kryvyi Rih, the Friday strike compounded a year of nightly air-raid alerts with a daytime catastrophe in the heart of their commercial district. The question of how many more victims remain beneath the rubble, and whether the death toll will continue to rise, remained unanswered as Friday turned to Saturday.

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  • More students planning to live at home for university over ‘insane’ living costs

    More students planning to live at home for university over ‘insane’ living costs

    Living at Home for University: A Nine-Year Record as Costs Outpace Student Budgets

    Constantvpn.com – For the first time in nearly a decade, more than one in three UK 18-year-olds accepted into higher education have told admissions officials they intend to remain at their family home throughout their degree. The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) recorded over 81,000 such declarations this cycle — a figure that marks a sharp departure from 2017, when roughly one in five applicants in the same age bracket made the same choice. The upward trajectory is not confined to a single region: Scotland reports 48% of its applicants opting to stay put, while Wales sits at 20%, yet every part of the UK shows the same directional shift.

    The driver, by the students’ own accounts, is straightforward arithmetic. Accommodation prices have climbed steeply in recent years, and the gap between what a maintenance loan covers and what a room actually costs has widened to the point where commuting — or forgoing campus life altogether — becomes the rational financial decision.

    Two Friends, Two Commutes, One Calculation

    Beatrice and Amelia, both from St Helens in Merseyside, made the decision independently but arrived at the same conclusion: they will not move into halls this September. Beatrice has secured a place at the University of Manchester to study mathematics and plans to travel by train, a round-trip journey totalling around 50 minutes. Amelia will attend Liverpool John Moores University, roughly 20 minutes away by rail.

    “My first choice was Manchester and then my second was Liverpool, so I knew I could commute,” Beatrice explains, noting that the accommodation she researched would have cost “a few grand a year.”

    Amelia’s numbers were even starker. The rooms she identified in Liverpool ranged from £300 to £400 per week — a weekly outlay that, over a typical academic year, dwarfs the cost of a season of train tickets. Neither friend is enthusiastic about the daily commute, yet both say they intend to participate fully in lectures, societies, and social events while sleeping in their childhood bedrooms.

    The Human Cost of “Insane” Prices

    Jessica, another incoming student at Liverpool John Moores University, frames the choice less as a budgeting exercise and more as a small grief. She had wanted to live on campus, to inhabit the full texture of student life, but found the rental market what she calls “ridiculous” and “insane.”

    “I have a part-time job as everything is so expensive, and then commuting is going to kill a lot of my free time as well. It is a bit sad really when you think about it.”

    What does console her, she admits, is the prospect of her parents’ cooked dinners at the end of each day — a small domestic comfort that no campus kitchen replicates.

    The scale of savings can be substantial. Earlier this year, a first-year student documented her daily 90-minute commute into Manchester and calculated that she was saving more than £7,000 on accommodation over the course of the year. For a household already stretched by inflation, that figure is not marginal; it is the difference between financial stability and precarity.

    The Broader Cost Picture

    The Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) estimated last year that a student needs approximately £61,000 over a three-year degree to maintain what it terms a “minimum socially acceptable standard of living” — a figure that excludes tuition fees entirely. In 2024, the weekly cost of renting in university-owned accommodation spanned from £108 (for 40- to 44-week contracts in Northern Ireland) to £338 (for the shortest contracts in London). In the capital, rent alone accounts for nearly half — 46% — of a student’s total living costs. Across most other regions, weekly rents cluster between £140 and £180, with privately run halls typically priced above the university-run average.

    Maintenance loans, available to most full-time undergraduates, were designed to bridge the gap between income and expenditure. Yet student unions report that the average annual price of a campus room is rising far faster than the loan amount, leaving a widening shortfall. Hepi’s data indicate that the majority of young full-time students now hold paid employment during term time specifically to close that gap.

    A Shift in How Young People Define University

    The financial pressure is reshaping not just where students sleep but what form their education takes. The Open University, long associated with mature learners balancing work and study from home, reports that almost 3,400 18- and 19-year-olds enrolled last year. They constituted 9.5% of all new starters — up from 5.7% six years earlier. Vice-chancellor Prof Dave Phoenix describes the trend as evidence of a fundamental rethinking among younger people about what university should look like.

    “It means they can avoid moving costs and high accommodation bills and, for others, it means keeping a job,” Phoenix says of online study.

    Yet the question of whether distance learning or home-based commuting can replicate the formative value of on-campus life remains contested. A recent report by Prof William Whyte of the University of Oxford argues that the communal, immersive character of residential university extends well beyond academics — shaping social networks, professional identity, and civic engagement in ways that a bedroom commute cannot fully substitute.

    What is clear, however, is that the economic calculus has tipped. With a record number of UK 18-year-olds accepted into university this year and rents continuing to outpace loan adjustments, the home-based student is no longer an exception. It is becoming the default assumption, and institutions — from commuter-friendly timetabling to flexible online delivery — will increasingly be judged by how well they accommodate it.

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  • Prince Harry and six others face privacy case legal bill of up to £34.5m

    Prince Harry and six others face privacy case legal bill of up to £34.5m

    Seven Claimants Confront £34.5m Costs Order After Privacy Trial Collapse

    Constantvpn.com – The Duke of Sussex and six fellow litigants now face a potential legal bill approaching £34.5 million following a High Court judge’s extraordinary costs ruling in their failed privacy action against Associated Newspapers Limited, the parent company of the Daily Mail. The order, handed down by Mr Justice Nicklin, represents one of the most punitive costs determinations in recent English civil litigation and places an immediate cash demand of £9.54 million on the claimants, payable by the Friday following the ruling.

    The Ruling and Its Rationale

    Justice Nicklin dismissed the group’s claims of unlawful information-gathering on 7 July, rejecting allegations that ANL had engaged in covert surveillance and other improper conduct. On Friday, the judge went further, imposing what he described as an exceptional costs order far exceeding the figures the parties had agreed before trial. He characterised the claimants’ conduct throughout the proceedings as “unreasonable to a high degree,” a finding that carried direct financial consequences.

    The judge determined that ANL’s recoverable costs would be assessed on an indemnity basis rather than the standard “reasonable” basis ordinarily applied in English civil cases. Indemnity costs shift the risk of cost overruns onto the losing party and typically yield a substantially higher recovery for the winner. Justice Nicklin acknowledged that a claim exceeding £34 million was, “on its face, excessive and as giving rise to real concerns as to whether all of the costs now claimed by Associated were reasonably incurred and are reasonable in amount.” Nevertheless, he declined to impose a fixed ceiling, reasoning that any cap would be “too broad-brushed, would risk unfairness, and would be vulnerable to the charge that it was arbitrary.”

    Who Is Affected

    Beyond Prince Harry, the seven claimants included Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish, former Liberal Democrat deputy leader Sir Simon Hughes, racial justice campaigner Baroness Lawrence, and actresses Sadie Frost and Liz Hurley. Baroness Lawrence entered public life after the 1993 murder of her son Stephen Lawrence, a case that became a landmark in British racial justice history.

    The group had secured litigation insurance covering up to £16.2 million of ANL’s costs in the event of defeat. Because the judge’s order pushes the recoverable figure to as much as £34.5 million, the claimants could face an uninsured exposure of roughly £18 million above their policy limit.

    Appeal Window and Immediate Deadlines

    The claimants have until 2 October to lodge an appeal against both the substantive dismissal and the costs determination. Sir Simon Hughes told the BBC he was “disappointed” by the judgement and said he was “taking the time necessary to consider both the substantive and the costs judgment and whether to pursue appeals against decisions in either judgment or both.”

    Publisher Response

    In a statement issued on Friday, Associated Newspapers described the ruling as

    “a devastating critique of an attempt to destroy a newspaper and the reputations of its journalists, editors and executives.”

    The publisher had sought more than £9.9 million as an interim costs payment ahead of detailed cost hearings. Only after securing victory did it become apparent that its actual expenditure had far exceeded the initial agreed cap of £16 million.

    Context: The Trial and Its Aftermath

    The trial saw dozens of witnesses give evidence, including Prince Harry himself, who flew from the United States to attend court in person. Numerous current and former ANL journalists and executives testified, denying any illegal activity. The judge noted it was “striking” that “not a single allegation of serious wrongdoing was voluntarily withdrawn” by the claimants during the proceedings.

    “That matters. Serious allegations of criminality or grave impropriety cannot properly be left hanging over individuals in that way. If a party no longer advances such an allegation, or no longer has a proper evidential basis for advancing it, the allegation should be withdrawn clearly and in terms.”

    Justice Nicklin added that the claimants’ failure to withdraw unsupported allegations “was not ordinary forensic judgment” and “was not a proper or disciplined way to deal with serious allegations.”

    In a joint statement following the substantive ruling last month, Prince Harry and Baroness Lawrence said:

    “We came to court seeking justice and accountability. But we have received neither. It is a complete and obvious whitewash, but sadly not altogether unexpected.”

    Broader Implications

    The costs order arrives at a moment of heightened personal significance for the Duke of Sussex. Just days before the ruling, Prince Harry and Meghan announced their intention to relocate back to the United Kingdom, with their children Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, set to begin school in September. A potential £18 million uninsured liability could complicate that transition considerably.

    For the wider litigation landscape, the decision signals that English courts will not hesitate to impose indemnity-basis costs orders when they perceive a claimant’s conduct as fundamentally unreasonable. The ruling also underscores the financial risk inherent in multi-claimant privacy actions against well-resourced media defendants: even with insurance in place, the gap between a policy limit and an uncapped indemnity award can be enormous. The case, which had drawn sustained public attention to questions of journalistic surveillance and media accountability, now enters its final procedural phase as the claimants weigh whether to appeal before the 2 October deadline.

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  • Girl, 6, dies after family killed in sea off Shoreham

    Girl, 6, dies after family killed in sea off Shoreham

    Family of Four Lost in Tragic Sea Incident Near Shoreham, West Sussex

    Constantvpn.com – A British family visiting the Sussex coast from London lost four lives in a single afternoon when they became trapped in rough water off a small beach near Shoreham Port. The youngest victim, a six-year-old girl named Saja El-Khawas, was pulled from the sea by rescue crews but later died in hospital. Her father, mother, and teenage sister were pronounced dead at the scene despite immediate resuscitation attempts by paramedics.

    The incident unfolded on a Tuesday afternoon at Kingston Beach, a stretch of shoreline situated just a short walk from the historic Shoreham Fort and the working harbour of Shoreham Port. Shoreham-by-Sea sits roughly 6.3 miles (10.1 km) east of Brighton, making it a popular day-trip destination for families from the capital and surrounding areas. On this particular day, the El-Khawas family had driven down from their London home specifically to spend time at the coast.

    Timeline of the Afternoon

    According to police, the family entered the water from the beach at Shoreham Fort at approximately 14:00 BST. Around forty minutes later, at roughly 14:40, emergency services received a call reporting four people in difficulty in the sea. A large-scale multi-agency response was mounted within minutes, drawing in HM Coastguard, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), South East Coast Ambulance Service, and Sussex Police.

    Saja was recovered from the water by emergency crews and transported to hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Hassan El-Khawas, 55, his wife Zeina Alayn, 37, and their 14-year-old daughter Sara were all confirmed dead at the scene. Paramedics worked continuously to resuscitate the three adults and the teenager, but their efforts proved unsuccessful.

    Police Investigation and Official Response

    Sussex Police confirmed the family had travelled from London to visit the Shoreham area that day. In a public statement, the force outlined what was known at the time of publication:

    “The investigation into the incident remains open, but following review of CCTV footage and initial witness accounts, the current hypothesis is that this was a tragic accident, with no third-party involvement.”

    The force added that a formal file would be compiled for the coroner in preparation for a subsequent inquest into the deaths.

    Chief Superintendent James Collis addressed the community and the wider public in a statement released after Saja’s death was confirmed:

    “This heartbreaking update is one we all feared in the aftermath of Tuesday’s tragic events.”

    “The impact of this tragedy has been felt across the country, and I know the Shoreham community, emergency responders and all involved will continue to be affected for a long time to come.”

    “I would like to thank all of the public who have shared their sympathies and kind words.”

    The Family’s Background

    The El-Khawas family were British citizens of Palestinian origin, based in London. Their ancestral roots trace back to the Rashidieh refugee camp in Lebanon, a settlement established in the 1940s for Palestinian displaced persons. The extended family has maintained a presence in the United Kingdom for many years, according to the Palestinian Forum, a London-based advocacy organisation representing Palestinian communities in Britain.

    Their decision to drive down to the Sussex coast for a family outing made the loss all the more devastating — a routine weekend plan that ended in catastrophe within hours.

    Community Reaction and Tributes

    Residents of Shoreham gathered at the beach in the days following the incident, leaving bouquets of flowers, handwritten notes, and other personal tributes along the shoreline where the family had entered the water. The Beach Residents’ Association, a local body representing households in the Shoreham area, said the event had

    “sent shockwaves across the local community.”

    Joss Loader, a local councillor who represents the Shoreham Beach Residents’ Association and has lived in the area for most of her life, described the deaths as a

    “shocking, heart-rending tragedy.”

    Prime Minister Andy Burnham issued a brief statement calling the incident a

    “terrible family tragedy.”

    Local Context: Shoreham’s Coastline and Hazards

    Shoreham’s coastline, while popular with families and holidaymakers, sits adjacent to a major commercial port and a tidal estuary. The waters around Shoreham Fort and Kingston Beach can shift quickly, with strong tidal currents and shifting sandbanks creating conditions that can overwhelm even confident swimmers within minutes. The area’s proximity to Brighton means it draws large numbers of visitors, particularly on warm summer days, when casual beachgoers may underestimate the power of the tide.

    The Shoreham Fort itself is a Grade II-listed coastal defence structure dating to the early nineteenth century, now a landmark visible from much of the beach. Its presence marks the point where the family entered the water that afternoon.

    The coroner’s inquest, once formally opened, will examine the precise circumstances of the incident, including tidal conditions at the time, whether any safety signage or warnings were in place, and the sequence of events leading to the family becoming trapped in the water. Until that process concludes, police have asked the public to continue to respect the privacy of the bereaved family.

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  • ‘King puts William first’ and Harry security could cost public ‘£5m a year’

    ‘King puts William first’ and Harry security could cost public ‘£5m a year’

    Harry’s Homecoming: What the Sussexes’ Return Means for the Crown, the Public Purse, and Royal Protocol

    Constantvpn.com – After six years in California, Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, are preparing to fly back to Britain — and the decision has sent shockwaves through every corner of the establishment. The move, which landed on a Friday and immediately consumed the nation’s front pages, is being framed by insiders as a personal choice rather than a political statement, yet its implications ripple far beyond the family unit. At the centre of the storm sits a question no one in power seems eager to answer outright: who pays to keep the Sussexes safe once they are back on British soil?

    The King’s Calculus: William First, Always

    King Charles III has reportedly expressed that he is “pleased” his younger son is coming home. But the monarch’s satisfaction comes with a firm boundary. Those closest to the Palace describe a clear hierarchy: Prince William, as heir, and the institution of the monarchy itself, remain the King’s overriding priorities. The King was reportedly in the company of his eldest son when the news of the return first surfaced, and he has privately insisted that the operational work of the Crown will not be altered by Harry’s presence.

    The Daily Mirror’s reporting suggests the King and William are in full agreement that the Sussexes’ homecoming “changes nothing” about their standing within the family structure. A source close to the Prince of Wales put the matter more bluntly, saying William simply “doesn’t have time” for what he perceives as the Sussexes’ ongoing “drama.” The implication is stark: Harry may be back in the country, but he is not back in the inner circle.

    The £5 Million Question

    One of the most pressing practical issues is cost. Estimates circulating in Westminster suggest that providing a full police protection detail for the Sussexes could run to approximately £5 million per year. Whether that sum will be met from the public purse or from private funds remains unresolved. No formal agreement for taxpayer-funded security has been struck before the family’s return flight, though negotiations over police protection are expected to reopen once the couple establishes permanent residency in Britain.

    Prime Minister Andy Burnham, pressed on the matter, sidestepped the question entirely, characterising the issue as a “private matter.” That deflection has only deepened public curiosity about who ultimately shoulders the bill — and whether the arrangement will become a flashpoint between Buckingham Palace, Whitehall, and the Sussex household.

    Winning Back Trust, One Silence at a Time

    Harry’s stated intention, as understood by those tracking the family’s internal dynamics, is to rebuild the King’s confidence by ceasing public commentary on private family affairs. The expectation is that the Sussexes will keep a lower profile than their years in North America demanded. No photographs of Prince Archie or Princess Lilibet are planned for their first day at school or for their birthdays, a deliberate departure from the social-media-heavy approach that defined their earlier public life.

    “Back in the fold but not in the firm.”

    That pithy summary captures the consensus among Palace aides: the Sussexes will live in Britain, but they will not resume formal royal duties. They are guests of the realm, not officers of the Crown.

    Balmoral Becomes a Summit

    The annual summer gathering of senior royals at the King’s Scottish estate, Balmoral, has reportedly been overtaken by discussions about the Sussexes’ return. The atmosphere, one account suggests, now echoes the so-called Sandringham summit of 2020, when Harry first signalled his intention to step back from royal obligations. What was once a family holiday has, in effect, become a working session on how to manage a homecoming that no one in the institution had planned for.

    US-based sources have offered a more pointed explanation for the timing of the move, suggesting the couple grew weary of the political environment under President Donald Trump. The sentiment, relayed in colourful language, frames the return less as a royal reconciliation than as an escape from an American political climate the family found intolerable.

    Broader Front-Page Context

    The Sussexes’ return did not occupy every newspaper in isolation. The Guardian chose to lead instead with an interview featuring equalities minister Bridget Phillipson, who warned that racism and sexism are being normalised in British society, particularly among young men drawn into what she described as a social-media environment that rewards hostility. She told the outlet’s podcast:

    “Things that not very long ago felt totally unacceptable are becoming normal.”

    In financial markets, investors continued to sell US government bonds on Thursday despite efforts by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to allay fears about debt levels and inflation. The sustained selling underscores deep unease among institutional investors over whether Washington can contain price pressures fuelled by hostilities in the Middle East.

    On the ground in west London, a different story made headlines. Satwant Singh, 48, a shopkeeper in Hounslow, defied a hosepipe ban to battle a suspected arson fire that killed one woman. His intervention helped rescue neighbours from the blaze, and his actions became the lead story for at least one national title, a reminder that while the royal family’s drama commands global attention, ordinary acts of courage continue to shape local news cycles.

    What Comes Next

    The Sussexes’ permanent residency in Britain will force a series of decisions that have no clean precedent in modern royal history. Questions of security funding, media access, children’s schooling, and the couple’s relationship to formal protocol will all require answers. Until those questions are resolved, the homecoming remains less a settled fact than an open negotiation — one in which the King’s patience, William’s bandwidth, and the taxpayer’s tolerance will all be tested.

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  • How much could Trump’s ‘economic D-Day’ hurt Iran?

    How much could Trump’s ‘economic D-Day’ hurt Iran?

    Washington’s Latest Gambit: An Economic Siege Aimed at Iran’s Trade Partners

    Constantvpn.com – What began as a promise of rapid military dominance over Tehran has, nearly half a year later, calcified into a grinding stalemate. Neither a decisive battlefield outcome nor a negotiated ceasefire has materialised, and the diplomatic channels that once offered a sliver of hope have largely gone silent. Into that vacuum, President Donald Trump has now injected a new instrument of coercion: what he has labelled an “economic D-Day,” a sweeping campaign designed to impose “tremendous” financial penalties on any nation that continues to trade with, fund, or otherwise sustain the Iranian economy.

    The logic is straightforward in theory. If direct military pressure cannot compel Tehran to capitulate, then strangling the external lifelines that keep its economy afloat might. The complication, however, is that Iran has been living under layers of Western sanctions for decades. Its leadership has repeatedly demonstrated both the political will and the institutional ingenuity to absorb severe economic shocks, reroute commerce through informal networks, and outlast the very measures meant to break it.

    What Washington Has Signalled

    The precise operational details of the new pressure campaign have not yet been published. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent indicated that a formal briefing would follow on 24 August, at which point the mechanics of enforcement would be laid out. In the interim, however, his remarks on CNBC left little ambiguity about the administration’s posture toward third-party traders.

    “You are either with us or against us. If you insist on doing business with [Iran], either transferring money, buying their oil or doing seaborne sea transfers, then the US Treasury and the US government… will put its full might and force toward enforcing against you.”

    Vice-President JD Vance framed the initiative as a distinct escalation in the broader confrontation, calling economic coercion the “most effective” lever remaining in the American toolkit. Speaking on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton programme, Vance characterised recent weeks as evidence that Tehran had absorbed more pressure than Washington had.

    “They’re going to try to apply economic pressure to us, but what has been true over the last couple of weeks is that they felt a lot more pressure than we have. We’re going to keep that going because we think that’s the best way to ultimately achieve the final objective.”

    Decades of Sanctions and the JCPOA Rupture

    Any assessment of whether a fresh sanctions wave can achieve what predecessors could not must begin with history. The United States has maintained some form of economic restriction on Iran since shortly after the Islamic Republic was established in 1979. Those restrictions tightened dramatically in 2018, when the first Trump administration pulled Washington out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — the 2015 multilateral agreement in which Iran agreed to cap its uranium enrichment in exchange for phased relief from Western financial penalties. The JCPOA’s collapse removed the principal incentive structure that had kept Iran’s nuclear programme within negotiated limits, and it reset the economic calculus for every trading partner that had been courting Tehran’s oil and petrochemical exports.

    In the present conflict, the administration has already deployed what it calls Operation Economic Fury, a two-track programme pairing Treasury-coordinated sanctions aimed at regime financial flows with a naval blockade of Iranian ports. The “economic D-Day” announcement appears to layer a third dimension onto that architecture: explicit, publicly signalled consequences for foreign governments and firms that continue to move goods, capital, or shipping services through or toward Iran.

    Analysts Question the Strategy’s Coherence

    Imran Bayoumi, a geostrategy specialist at the Atlantic Council in Washington and a former policy adviser within the US defence department, read the latest announcement less as a coherent new doctrine than as a symptom of frustration. In his assessment, the administration has exhausted its preferred military and diplomatic options without securing the outcome Trump publicly demanded, and is now reaching for economic instruments as a fallback.

    “This is really a recognition that the US is almost stuck in this war. It’s another try at economic pressure.”

    Bayoumi went further, arguing that neither a military end-state nor an economic end-state has been clearly articulated by the White House. Without a defined objective, he contended, the sanctions apparatus risks becoming a blunt instrument that punishes peripheral economies while leaving Tehran’s core decision-making calculus unchanged.

    Michael Parker, who spent eight years inside the Office of Foreign Assets Control and now advises on sanctions architecture, offered a more technical reading. He suggested the new campaign is an attempt to widen what he called the “economic blast radius” of existing measures by explicitly targeting third-country actors whose economies depend on the US dollar but who continue to facilitate Iranian trade. Historically, Washington has relied on the implicit threat of secondary sanctions against foreign banks to secure voluntary compliance. Parker argued that the current approach would make that threat explicit and operational, reaching into any dollar-denominated transaction that also touches an Iranian counterparty.

    “Thus far, the US has largely used the threat of these secondary sanctions against foreign financial institutions to encourage compliance with sanctions policy. But this is a lever that is sort of unexplored insofar as targeting anything touching the US dollar that is also touching Iran.”

    Tehran’s Proven Capacity to Adapt

    The central counter-argument to any new sanctions package is empirical: Iran has repeatedly found workarounds. Mohammed Hammouda, an export-control and sanctions manager at the London Stock Exchange, described a pattern in which Tehran deploys “shadow” tanker fleets to move crude oil outside sanctioned shipping lanes, and spins up new commercial entities that do not appear on US Treasury watch-lists. Each enforcement action, he noted, tends to generate a fresh set of intermediaries within weeks.

    “You keep seeing new names popping up, because Iran is adapting really quickly. Whatever sanctions one does, they find a new road [around it].”

    Hammouda emphasised that the visible architecture of sanctions — the lists, the regulations, the public designations — represents only the surface layer. The substantive enforcement work occurs behind the scenes, with teams in multiple jurisdictions attempting to trace funds, vessels, and corporate structures that are deliberately obscured. That asymmetry between the speed of Iranian adaptation and the slower tempo of multilateral enforcement is, in his view, the principal reason successive sanctions packages have failed to produce the political concessions Washington sought.

    What Comes Next

    The 24 August briefing will determine whether the administration’s rhetoric translates into enforceable mechanisms or remains a declaratory posture. For trading partners in Asia, Europe, and the Gulf, the stakes are immediate: continued engagement with Iranian oil, petrochemicals, and transit shipping now carries an explicit, named threat of Treasury action. For Tehran, the question is whether a further tightening of external pressure can finally compress the space within which its informal networks operate, or whether the regime will once again absorb the shock, reroute its commerce, and wait for the next administration to recalibrate its objectives.

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  • ‘I’ve caught one fish all season’ – how a polluted river could end 300 years of coracle fishing

    ‘I’ve caught one fish all season’ – how a polluted river could end 300 years of coracle fishing

    A River That Once Teemed With Life Now Yields Almost Nothing

    Constantvpn.com – For three centuries, the Elias family has taken to the waters of the River Tywi in Carmarthenshire, Wales, each generation passing down the craft of coracle fishing — a practice rooted in the small, rounded wooden boats that have shaped coastal and inland life across west Wales since at least the 17th century. Now, that lineage faces an existential threat. Keith Elias, a fifth-generation practitioner of the trade, spent the entire three-month season from May through July and brought home a single fish. His great-grandfather, William Elias, would have found such a haul unthinkable on a river that once ran so dense with salmon and sewin (sea trout) that nets barely had room to swing.

    The collapse in catch numbers is not anecdotal. Andrew Davies, 63, who has fished the Tywi for 38 years and chairs the Carmarthen Coracle and Netsman Association, put the situation bluntly:

    “I’ve been fishing for 38 years, I’ve never seen a season as bad as this. When I first started, this river was black with fish, it was alive with fish. But it’s gone now — there’s no life in the river.”

    Davies said only four coracle licences were issued for the current season, down from the dozen he recalls when he first cast his net. The four remaining fishers on the Tywi managed a combined total of 12 fish across the entire 2026 season — a number that, just a handful of years ago, represented a single night’s take.

    The Weight of a Vanishing Tradition

    Coracle fishing was once a genuine livelihood for communities along west Wales’s rivers. Fishermen worked at night, launching their shallow-drafted vessels from riverbanks and casting weighted nets into the current to intercept migrating salmon and sea trout. Today the practice survives largely as a heritage activity, a cultural anchor rather than a breadwinner. Even American politics once touched the tradition: President Jimmy Carter was known to enjoy fishing in Welsh rivers during visits. Yet the fishermen who keep the practice alive say recent water quality has rendered the activity functionally impossible.

    “It’s been in my family for so long, I love carrying the tradition on, but it’s getting to the point where you get to the end of the season and you’re not hitting fish. You just don’t want to go,” Elias said.

    What the Water Tells

    Citizen scientists working for the campaign group Save the River Tywi have been conducting regular water-quality tests along the river’s course. Their findings point to contamination from multiple vectors: industrial discharge, agricultural runoff, and untreated human waste. Fishermen corroborate the data with what they observe directly — dead fish bobbing to the surface, a persistent foul odour rising from the water, and visible algal blooms that turn stretches of the river into a murky, oxygen-depleted slurry.

    Local residents have also posted video footage online showing what they identify as discharge plumes entering the river near the site of Mekatek, an electronics-recycling company operating under a discharge licence issued by Natural Resources Wales (NRW). Mekatek responded by saying it shared concern over the decline in sewin populations and noted it had spent more than 40 years refining its processes to minimise environmental impact. The company invited anyone sceptical to arrange a site visit and observe operations firsthand.

    Enforcement and Investment: Promises Against a Backdrop of Spills

    NRW, the public body responsible for water-quality regulation in Wales, stated that it treats every pollution report seriously and confirmed a number of ongoing enforcement and compliance investigations within the Tywi catchment. Davies, however, expressed frustration that repeated reports to the agency have produced no visible corrective action.

    “I think something needs to be done to clean the rivers up in Wales, people have been dodging the bullet,” he said.

    The broader picture is grim. The nearby River Teifi was identified last year as one of the most polluted waterways in the United Kingdom, with 2,232 recorded spills lasting more than 22,000 cumulative hours in 2024 alone. Some of those incidents were attributed to Welsh Water, the region’s water utility. The company announced it will invest £889 million in storm-overflow infrastructure between 2025 and 2030, including six specific projects designed to reduce the volume of untreated water discharged into the Tywi. Welsh Water added that improving river water quality requires collaboration across sectors — industry, agriculture, and water services alike — rather than action by any single entity.

    What Is at Stake

    The Tywi’s decline is not merely a sporting or heritage concern. Salmon and sea trout are keystone species in freshwater ecosystems; their absence signals cascading damage to invertebrate populations, riparian habitats, and the water chemistry that supports all aquatic life. For the communities of Carmarthenshire and wider west Wales, the river also carries cultural weight — it appears in poetry, place-names, and the identity of towns built along its banks. Mayor of Carmarthen Russell Sparks described the river’s condition as a “really tough situation,” noting that over recent years it has been “really sad to see it, feel it and smell it,” attributing the odour to a combination of pollutants and algal blooms.

    If the trend continues, the coracle — a vessel type unique to Wales and a symbol of its maritime and riverine heritage — may become a museum artefact rather than a working craft. The question facing policymakers, regulators, and industry is whether intervention can still reverse decades of cumulative damage, or whether the Tywi’s fishery, and with it a 300-year-old family tradition, will simply fade into silence.

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