Author: admin@primenews

Water companies in England and Wales want bills to increase by £156 a year by 2030 to pay for upgrades and reduce sewage discharges. The increase would allow infrastructure spending to almost double to £96bn, the water industry says. But the proposals come amid public anger at the amount of sewage being discharged into rivers and seas and continued cost of living pressures. Water industry regulator Ofwat has been asked to approve the plans. If given the green light, water companies say the “record-breaking” investment proposals will secure the country’s water supply in the long-term. However, critics say customers should not be…

Apple has blamed a bug in its operating system and updates to apps such as Instagram for its new iPhone 15 overheating. Since the latest model of the smartphone went on sale in September, some users have complained the devices are getting too hot to touch. Apple said there was a bug when updating iOS 17 on the phone. But it also claimed that changes to third party apps are “causing them to overload the system”. iPhone users have come to expect their devices to become hotter during the initial set-up or when they are being backed up, due to…

Pope Francis has suggested he would be open to having the Catholic Church bless same-sex couples. Responding to a group of cardinals who asked him for clarity on the issue, he said any request for a blessing should be treated with “pastoral charity”. “We cannot be judges who only deny, reject, and exclude,” he said. He added, however, that the Church still considered same-sex relationships “objectively sinful” and would not recognise same-sex marriage. The request was one of a number sent to the Pope ahead of a weeks-long global gathering to discuss the future of the Church set to get…

A group of 67 women from Greenland are seeking compensation from the Danish government over a campaign of involuntary birth control in the 1960s. At least 4,500 women, some of them teenagers, were fitted with coils under a programme intended to limit birth rates among the indigenous population. An inquiry is due to conclude in 2025, but the women, some of whom are in their 70s, want compensation now. They are seeking 300,000 kroner (£34,880; $42,150) each. Greenland, now a semi-sovereign territory of Denmark, was a Danish colony until 1953. The scale of the campaign was exposed last year in a podcast published by…

Kapil Jain’s father didn’t want his children to be farmers. “My father had seen the hardship which farmers go through, so we were all educated and moved to the city to pursue a profession,” he says. But Mr Jain become tired with life in the city, and in 2018 he moved back to his family farm, near Kota in Rajasthan, north India. “I realised that I like the touch of earth and wanted to move back to the village and start farming,” he says. He didn’t want to farm the same crops as his father – wheat, rice, mustard and…

The United States military kicked off two weeks of multilateral exercises with its Philippine allies and multiple international partners on Monday amid rising tensions between Manila and Beijing over territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Maritime Training Activity Sama Sama 2023 is the seventh and largest iteration of the drills as participants from Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the United Kingdom and Malaysia join the US and the Philippines, according to a US Navy press release. The exercises off the Philippine coast will include drills on anti-submarine, surface and air warfare as well as land phases, the release said. “In…

The ratings are out of a broadcaster’s wildest dreams. NBC said on Monday that the Chiefs-Jets thriller attended by Taylor Swift and a star-studded crew, as the pop star’s relationship with tight end Travis Kelce blossoms in public view, averaged a staggering 27 million viewers, making it the most-watched Sunday show since the Super Bowl in February. The broadcast, which saw a surge of more than 2 million female viewers, unquestionably owes its record numbers to Swift, whose attendance yet again generated a frenzy of buzz that effectively overshadowed the game itself. At its peak, NBC said that a whopping…

Get your tickets ready: An estimated $1.04 billion dollar jackpot could be yours in Monday night’s Powerball drawing. The massive prize is the second-largest jackpot this year and the fourth-largest in the lottery’s history, Powerball said. The winning numbers are: 12, 26, 27, 43, 47 and Powerball 5. If a player were to pick all the right numbers in Monday’s drawing, they’d have the option of a lump sum payment of $478.2 million – before taxes. The jackpot crossed the billion-dollar mark after no ticket matched all six numbers drawn on Saturday: white balls 19, 30, 37, 44 and 46 and red Powerball…

Stocks in Hong Kong sank the most since early June after trading resumed following a Chinese holiday, as worries mounted on China’s weak housing market, while investors were also concerned about persistently high US interest rates. The Hang Seng Index was down 3% on Tuesday morning, as investors returned from a long holiday weekend. The index was on track for its worst day in three months and its lowest close since November. The gauge is among the world’s worst index performers this year, down more than 12%. Investors were gripped by worries about China’s economic slowdown, a property market slump, and frictions between Beijing…

Eight members of an organ trafficking ring in north-east Pakistan have been arrested, police say. The ring’s alleged leader, Fawad Mukhtar, is accused of extracting the kidneys of more than 300 people and transplanting them into rich clients. He had previously been arrested five times for malpractice, but managed to secure bail each time. At least three people died from having their organs harvested in this way, authorities said. The gang was believed to be operating across eastern Punjab province, as well as in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The transplants were carried out in private homes – often without the patient knowing,…