Cameron won’t apologise for calling Trump ‘stupid’
As we reported yesterday, an adviser for Donald Trump has demanded that David Cameron apologise for calling the US presidential candidate “divisive, stupid and wrong” last year. But now Downing Street has said it has “no intention” of apologising for the remark.
Cameron made the comments last year after Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, proposed a ban on all Muslims from entering the United States, the
Huffington Post UK reported. It’s extremely unusual for a British prime minister to publicly insult a US presidential candidate – but at the time Cameron made the comments, Trump’s candidacy was largely seen as a joke.
But even though the expected flame-out never happened, Cameron is standing by his comments, the
Huffington Post reported.
“The prime minister has no intention of withdrawing his comments,” a spokesman for Downing Street said Wednesday.
Scottish economy lags far behind UK as a whole
The Scottish economy is growing far more slowly than the UK as a whole, according to a
Guardian report.
Last year, the North Sea oil slump dragged Scotland’s gross domestic product down by 1% in cash terms. The GDP has only grown by 4% since the recession, according to an analysis by economist John McLaren. Meanwhile, the UK economy as a whole has grown by 23% in cash terms in the same timeframe, the
Guardian reported.
“There has … been a virtual standstill in GDP per capita since 2008, which has resulted in it falling below the level seen for the UK,” McLaren said. “The worsening trade position, largely with respect to the UK, is also a big worry, especially the fall in exports last year to the rest of the UK.”
Cambridge, Oxford slip in world university rankings
Cambridge and Oxford have slipped in global reputation, according to a BBC report.
The two universities are still in the top five of the Times Higher Education world reputation rankings, with Cambridge at number four and Oxford at number five, but both have slipped down two places since 2015.
All told, the UK has 10 universities in the top 100, although several have fallen in the rankings since last year. The list is compiled based upon an invitation-only survey of the world’s leading academics.
The US continued its traditional dominance of the list, boasting eight out of the top 10 universities – with Harvard in the number-one slot, the
BBC reported.
British scientists create molecule-sized motor
Scientists at Cambridge have created what they’re calling the world’s smallest engine, according to
Gizmag.
The nano-scale motor is built from microscopic particles of gold held in a gel. When heated with a laser and subsequently cooled, the gel rapidly expands, pushing the gold particles apart and releasing mechanical energy. The engine is only 60 nanometers wide, according to
LiveScience. For comparison, a human hair is about 100,000 nanometers wide.
The team believes the engine may one day be used to power microscopic robots that could, for instance, have medical applications,
Gizmag reported.
Health trust posts confidential data for thousands of employees on public website
A health trust will have to pay a £185,000 fine after posting confidential data for thousands of staff members on its website, according to a BT report.
Balckpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust accidentally published employees’ personal information – including National Insurance numbers, birthdates, religious beliefs, and even sexual orientation – on its website in 2014. The trust didn’t notice the mistake for 10 months, and then took an additional five months to get around to alerting affected staff members, the Information Commissioner’s Office reported.
“This trust played fast and loose with the highly sensitive and private information that was entrusted to them,” said Stephen Eckersly, ICO head of enforcement. “It seems they ignored their duty to put rules in place to protect staff who deliver hospital services to others.”
During the period that the data was publicly available, it was accessed at least 59 times, and data was downloaded by “persons unknown” on several occasions, BT reported.
American arrested for most American thing ever
A 41-year-old American man has been arrested for doing possibly the most American thing that has ever been done.
Police in Hartford, Connecticut, allege that Anthony Gonzalez stole a horse and took it for a joyride while drunk and wearing a cowboy hat, the
Mirror reported. Police did not report whether Gonzalez also yelled “yee-haw” while firing twin six-shooters into the air.
Gonzalez allegedly went after hours to the stables where he worked and liberated a horse named Handsome. Police were soon receiving “numerous” phone calls from Hartford residents who claimed to have seen a man in a black cowboy hat riding a horse down the middle of the street. The horse was holding up traffic, and was allegedly almost struck by several vehicles.
Cops tracked the desperado back to the stables and arrested him, the
Mirror reported. Handsome was uninjured and reportedly “in good spirits.”
US police chase down man fleeing scene with monkey
Police near Seattle, Washington, had a bit of excitement Wednesday when they had to chase down a man who sped by a state trooper at 112 mph, crashed into a neighbourhood, fled on foot, then stopped and returned to his car to retrieve a monkey.
When officers finally caught up to the fleeing man, the monkey – which turned out to be a pet – was clinging to his back,
NBC News reported. The man was held on suspicion of leaving the scene of an accident, but a police spokesperson said the monkey would not be charged.
“Once we determined the monkey was not the driver, we released him to a family member,” the spokesperson said. “He was only engaged in monkey business.”
