Brexit 

Express
EXPORTS are now 20 percent higher than they were five years ago, a new report has revealed – with its authors claiming their analysis puts “yet another nail in the coffin of the doomsayers” who predicted quitting the bloc would be a disaster.
Pro-Brexit think tank Facts4EU reached their striking conclusions after studying the Office for National Statistics’ latest trade figures, for the second quarter of the year up to the end of June. These showed exports to the EU have rebounded by 31.5 percent compared with the previous quarter.
In addition, the total value of UK exports to EU27 countries stood at £38.6billion – £8.4billion higher than in the second quarter of 2016, just before the momentous vote, a rise of one-fifth.
Leigh Evans, Facts4EU’s editor-in-chief, said: “For the benefit of our international readers, it is impossible to overstate the level of state-sponsored pro-EU propaganda to which the British public was subjected before the EU Referendum.
“Facts4EU.Org’s report today puts yet another nail in the coffin of the doomsayers and pro-EU propagandists who perpetrated a malign, dispiriting, and apocalyptic campaign, portraying a defeated, insignificant country facing a bleak non-EU future.” 

Russia 

Express
RUSSIAN Navy anti-submarine destroyer named Vice-Admiral Kulakov has entered the English Channel accompanied by multiple support vessels.
A large anti-submarine ship has entered the English Channel earlier today, the press service of the Russian Northern Fleet has reported.
The statement said: “Today, a detachment of ships and support vessels, headed by the large anti-submarine ship Vice-Admiral Kulakov of the Northern Fleet, passed the Pas-de-Calais and continues to move southward in the English Channel.”
The fleet consists of a Russian corvette military ship called “Gremyachchiy” that belongs to the Pacific Fleet, and a minesweeper vessel named “Vladimir Emelyanov” from the Black Sea Fleet.
The two ships reportedly joined the anti-submarine destroyer Vice-Admiral Kulakov of the Northern Fleet in the North Sea on August 12 after participating in Russia’s Main Naval Parade.
They will now work together on a number of unspecified tasks that include inter-fleet cooperation and long trips.
The Main Naval Parade took place on the river Neva in St Petersburg on July 25, which is known as Navy Day in Russia.
Around 4,000 sailors, and over 50 ships, boats and submarines took part in the parade.
More than 40 aeroplanes and helicopters were also present, according to the President of Russia’s website.  

A similar story can be read in the Mirror 

Illegal immigrants 

Express
A RECORD number of migrants have crossed the English Channel this week.
Nearly 600 people made the journey on Thursday, a new record for a single day. More than 11,000 migrants have made the perilous journey across the Dover Strait on small boats just this year, according to PA.
According to the Home Office figures, they intercepted or rescued at least 592 people attempting to arrive at Kent beaches on Thursday.
French authorities intercepted at least 155 people on the same day.
This broke the previous record set last week, on August 4, when 482 people crossed over to the UK.
Thursday saw a group of 40 migrants rescued by French and Belgian authorities with the help of two fishing boats when their vessel began to sink.
French authorities reported that one person was unconscious and air-lifted to a nearby hospital.
It has now been reported that the 27-year-old died after he jumped overboard when the boat started to sink in the Dover Strait.
“The helicopter picked up 10 people, but they dropped them back on the boat, the [French Navy’s] Flamant.
“Just one (the 27-year-old) that they picked up went directly to the hospital,” Nikolai Posner from French migrant help association Utopia 56 told PA.
Following the tragic death, a manslaughter investigation has been launched. 

Similar stories can be read in the Sun, Mail, Morning Star, ITV News 

France 

Express
EMMANUEL MACRON attempted to boast about France’s vaccination campaign progress by sharing a graphic that fails to mention the UK and other countries speeding ahead of France.
The French President shared the picture of a graphic based on data released by Our World in Data on Thursday which showed that France was leading the vaccination race above the USA and Germany. In a bid to boast about himself and to convince more people to get vaccinated, He wrote: “Together we will make it happen.
“Because together France is stronger, more united, more civic, more responsible. Let’s get vaccinated.
“We are France.”
But Mr Macron’s gloating attempt was unmasked by Charles-Henri Gallois, Generation Frexit leader, as he shared the original graphic showing the UK, Canada and Spain are ahead of France in the vaccination race.
He mocked Mr Macron: “LOL.
“A scale like Fox News which forgets about figures from Spain, from Canada or the UK as comparable countries.”
It comes as France will strengthen lockdown rules in the overseas territory of Guadeloupe to rein in the spread of COVID-19, government spokesman Gabriel Attal said on Wednesday, as spikes in infections in its Caribbean islands overwhelm hospitals.
The French overseas territory of Martinique on Tuesday entered a tougher lockdown for three weeks to tackle the pandemic with the closure of beaches and shops selling non-essential items and restrictions on people’s movements.
Authorities in Martinique have also advised tourists to leave the island.
President Emmanuel Macron, who on Wednesday held a virtual meeting with his senior cabinet ministers to discuss the pandemic, said the COVID-19 situation in the Caribbean islands was “dramatic”. 

Guardian
Police in France are investigating a series of Covid-19 vaccine certificate scams after several doctors reported having their health service accounts hacked.
In the latest incident, one of several forgery rackets under investigation, fraudsters gained access to the online account of a GP near Bordeaux and obtained 55 false documents. Another doctor in Marseilles reported being similarly hacked, and others have told the authorities that there had been attempts to access their accounts.
France’s health authority has reported a growing number of forged certificates, with 46 incidents under police investigation since May. The forgers are also producing fake negative Covid-19 tests.
Several hackers have been put under investigation in recent weeks in Paris, Grenoble and Bordeaux. At the end of last month, a vaccine centre contract worker was jailed after he was found to have generated 200 false QR codes.
Two weeks ago, two women who had been working at a vaccine centre at Bordeaux were arrested and accused of selling fake certificates for between €80 and €150 each. They are being investigated for “fraud, profiting from fraud, and passive corruption” and face up to three years in prison and fines of up to €45,000 if convicted.
Those who bought the fakes are facing fines of up to €2,000. 

Energy 

Express
BREXIT BRITAIN has been handed a major boost towards meeting its green energy targets, as scientists across the pond unveil fusion technology set to beat the European Union’s (EU’s) fusion reactor in France.
Harnessing the power of the Sun here on Earth promises to solve many of the woes brought on by the burning of fossil fuels. A race is now on to develop the world’s first commercially viable fusion reactor and the UK Government has invested a staggering £222million towards this ambitious initiative. But the UK is not the only country going at it – the European Union and international partners are working on the ITER Tokamak in southern France. Now, a Massachusetts-based startup in the US has just announced a major technological breakthrough that will bring us one step closer to cheap, clean and renewable energy.
Researchers at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and the company Commonwealth Fusion Systems are edging closer to firing up a powerful magnet that will play a key role in generating fusion energy.
Fusion reactors use the most powerful magnets on the planet to contain the scorching plasma that is generated inside a fusion reactor.
The reactors work by combining light atoms of hydrogen into heavier atoms of helium – the same process of fusion that occurs at the centre of the Sun. 

A similar story can be read in the Telegraph 

Climate change 

Guardian
Global greenhouse gas emissions must peak in the next four years, coal and gas-fired power plants must close in the next decade and lifestyle and behavioural changes will be needed to avoid climate breakdown, according to the leaked draft of a report from the world’s leading authority on climate science.
Rich people in every country are overwhelmingly more responsible for global heating than the poor, with SUVs and meat-eating singled out for blame, and the high-carbon basis for future economic growth is also questioned.
The leak is from the forthcoming third part of the landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the first part of which was published on Monday, warning of unprecedented changes to the climate, some of them irreversible. The document, called the sixth assessment report, is divided into three parts: the physical science of climate change; the impacts and ways of reducing human influence on the climate.
Part three is not scheduled to be released before next March, but a small group of scientists decided to leak the draft via the Spanish branch of Scientist Rebellion, an offshoot of the Extinction Rebellion movement. It was first published by the journalist Juan Bordera in the Spanish online magazine CTXT.
Bordera told the Guardian that the leak reflected the concern of some of those involved in drawing up the document that their conclusions could be watered down before publication in 2022. Governments have the right to make changes to the “summary for policymakers”. 

Similar stories can be read in the Times, Evening Standard, Order-Order 

Telephones 

Mail
The death knell has been sounded for the traditional landline telephone.
From 2025, all households and businesses will need the internet to make calls under a major digital shake-up.
It means millions of customers will be pushed online for the first time or forced to rely on a mobile phone instead.
Those without internet may need an engineer to visit their home to get them set up and those with older phones could need to buy a new handset.
Industry insiders compared the move to the switch to digital TV in 2012, when broadcasters stopped transmitting traditional analogue signals to household rooftop or indoor aerials.
But while that change was led by the Government, the switch to ‘digital’ calls is being driven by the telecoms industry.
The upgrade will also impact other services that rely on the existing telephone network such as alarm systems, phones in lifts, payment terminals and red telephone boxes. Telecoms giants are aiming for the switchover to be complete in 2025.
But experts have raised concerns that millions of older and vulnerable households which are not online, do not use a mobile phone or live in a rural area with poor connectivity are at risk of being left behind.
Around 6 per cent of households – roughly 1.5 million homes – do not have access to the internet, according to watchdog Ofcom.
Many may only use the internet on their mobile phone via wireless services, while around half a million households do not own a mobile. 

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