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'His hand pauses in midair': Front desk attendant gets scolded for using his phone at work, instead he maliciously complies with company policy by wasting other precious office resources

No personal cell phones? Okay. This employee took his malicious compliance to the next level after getting scolded one too many times for using his cell phone on the job. 

I get it… It doesn't look good for a hotel receptionist to scroll memes while the line at the concierge starts to grow. Smacking your gum, rolling your eyes, and scrolling endlessly really isn't something you're supposed to be doing at work, but as many of us forget, our phones are actually super useful little tools. We've grown accustomed to traveling around all day with a tiny computer in our pocket that it's easy to let slip their more convenient functions. The front desk reception guy in our next tale knew all the ways his phone could help out clients, but after his manager got on his back about using his personal device on the clock, he decided to use the second language translating tool at his disposal. 

Keep scrolling to read how an employee turned a spiteful MC into a memorable guest experience when a traveler needed help with a quick translation.




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14-year-old daughter asks her mom to tell her the truth about how she looks, 39-year-old Karen mother does not mince her words: 'I told her she was average-looking'

Sure, honesty may seem like the best policy, but this Karen of a mother took things way too far.

At first, when reading about her seemingly genuine concern over her teenage daughter's body insecurity, one might think that this is an attentive, caring, and decent parent. However, when her daughter asked her to honestly tell her the truth about how she looks, this Karen thought it would be a good idea to tell her that she is, in fact, only average-looking. Her supposed point was to inform her daughter that most people in the world are average-looking, but as one might expect, this "truth-telling" moment did not sit well with a 14-year-old. 

When the mother shared her side of the story on Reddit, people eviscerated her in the comments section, and rightfully so. Keep scrolling below for the full story and for the best reactions from other mothers and daughters. For more, check out this post about a husband and wife's heated argument over money.




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Man is left jobless when scorned ex-employee refuses to hire him after receiving the same treatment 9 months prior: ‘HE is now redundant’

Nothing feels worse than being "made redundant" at your company after spending years being the best employee you could be. You did everything right! An employee that was always on time, always got tasks done in a timely manner, and never caused a ruckus in the office. Sometimes, there's no rhyme or reason to being made redundant. It's not a reflection of your work ethic, but rather, the very DNA of the corporate machine. Churn in, churn out.

When you finally go to apply for another position, you're surprised to see one of your ex-colleagues at that specific company. Hoping this would work in your favor, you complete the interview with high hopes. Instead of putting in a good word about you, your ex-colleague decides to tell the interviewer that you had "asked too many questions" at your previous workplace. Isn't curiosity what most employers want? Well, 9 months later, you see someone very familiar waiting to be interviewed at your new company. Your mouth turns upward into a small when you realize it's the same ex-colleague who refused to hire you. Sweet karma.




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'[It] is just really tacky': Job candidate interviews with glowing recommendation, picky manager spots one flaw and refuses to hire her

This manager is being totally ridiculous, and he doesn't even realize the full scope of what he did. 

Sticking your neck out for a friend can be risky. In this person's case, they recommended their friend for an interview at their coffee shop job. They figured this friend would be a shoo-in for the role. To be a great barista, you need to be upbeat and positive when interacting with customers, be able to put drinks together quickly, and work well under pressure. U/BAAAUGH was completely exasperated by the way her boss treated that friend she recommended for the job

The only person who should be embarrassed by the way things went down is the boss. It almost seems like he's worried that his staffers will steal coffee or something. First of all, most baristas do drink coffee at their workplaces, but it's a cheap item, just let them have it! And secondly, if that's the boss's biggest concern about a potential employee, maybe he should spend some more time behind the counter, preparing orders, and learning what it actually takes to thrive in a cafe environment. 

Up next, read about this scorned ex who yanked a $600 gift card back from an ex just to get back at her. 




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30 Memes to Cheer You Up Before the Workday Drags You Down

Hello, fellow employees, it's time for another day of corporate purgatory. It's the same every single day, like we're living in a never-ending Black Mirror episode. We wake up, contemplate whether or not to call in sick, decide not to, stumble in late to work anyway, and end up sitting at our desks getting paid to send emails and watch the grueling minutes tick by until 5 p.m. Then we commute home, spend the rest of the evening dreading another day of work, and repeat. 

If this sounds a little too relatable, you're in desperate need of some meme therapy. Make your morning a little less dreadful by checking out this compilation of memes made for those of us running on fumes. This week has been tough, to say the least, and we're still trying to adjust to the time change that snuck up on us (like it doesn't happen at the same time every year). So, let's take a collective mental reset and grab some much-needed laughs from these memes below.




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18-year-old stepdaughter refuses to accept younger stepdaughter and 39-year-old stepmother, stepmother tells her to move out: 'I told her that if she hates us so much then she can leave'

At 18, you are an adult in every sense of the word. Sure, your frontal lobe hasn't fully developed, and you're going to make a whole lot of bad choices over the next seven or so years, but the difference between 17 and 18 is that you're going to be solely responsible—and accountable—for those decisions. That means the way you engage your personal relationships and the decisions you make for your future are on you, despite your relative inability to properly rationalize them and your lack of experience in making them.

If you're fortunate and privileged, you'll still have the support of parents, guardians, and other mentors who push you in the right direction. If you're even more fortunate, you get to spend these years in a structured simulation environment called "college," where you get to engage with other frontal-lobe-ly challenged "adults" where you can go on adventures and make all kinds of terrible decisions that you'll look fondly on and/or regret for the rest of your life. But regardless of whether or not you attend this life-simulator, you're going to have to start getting your act together and taking responsibility, which is why the behavior of this 18-year-old, despite her tragic background, needs to desperately be adjusted.

This stepmother has been really struggling to develop a closer relationship with her 18-year-old stepdaughter, who has not adjusted well to her blended family, saying horrible things about her stepmother, who she has known as a parental figure for most of her life. This tragically complex situation is probably a signifier of some underlying trauma that the young woman is dealing with, but it prompted the stepmother to turn to this online community to see whether or not she was in the wrong for telling her stepdaughter to leave their home, to which the young woman complied.




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'[I] asked for a 15k raise': Hybrid employee pressured to come into the office 5 days a week, employee refuses to give in without his promised promotion

Let this story serve as a friendly reminder to stand up for what you were hired for in the first place. If your boss tries to impose new rules and regulations, new responsibilities, and new expectations that were not expressly written in your initial contract, then you are well within your right to advocate for yourself. That means advocating for a raise or promotion if you feel compelled to do so. It can also mean enforcing what's currently written in your contract if you do not wish to accept the new changes. Be prepared to receive some pushback, of course, but again, you have some leverage here.

This hybrid employee was hired with the expectation that he could spend two days working remotely, which was convenient for his family and young kid. When his boss suddenly decided to adjust those expectations and demand that he come into the office five days a week, the employee stood his ground and said he would only do so if he were granted a 15k raise. This led to a difficult negotiation process, but folks like us are proud of the original poster (OP) for not backing down. For more stories like this, check out this post about a company that tried to steal a job candidate's idea.




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Candidate gets rejected from a job they perfectly qualify for, they reapply with a new email account and immediately get moved up in the hiring process: ‘It was even the same recruiter’

Who didn't experience the frustration of getting email after email of rejection from countless jobs you thought you'd be perfect for? If you never experienced that, then congratulations! You are one in a million. If you do know what we're talking about, our question to you is – After how many rejections did you acknowledge that maybe the problem is you and something should change? 50? 100? 1000?  Plus, what does one should change to actually make a difference?

The person in this Reddit story came up with an interesting tactic after getting rejected from a job for which they were perfectly qualified. After several more similar rejections that made no sense to OP (original poster), they decided to open a new email account and reapply for jobs using the same exact resume. This tactic proved successful when they were immediately moved up to the next step in the hiring process for that initial perfect job.

Keep scrolling to read the full story. After you are done, click here for a story of an employee who overheard their boss talking about major workplace changes, and then confronted him about it.




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'I stopped trying to cover for her': 15-year-old calls out grandmother over concert attendance

This teenager is not going to waste her breath trying to convince her grandmother to watch her end-of-the-year school concert. Instead, she had a quick conversation with Grandma, and then turned off her phone!

In life, you'll learn that a lot of people are flaky. Being the friend who actually shows up to events time and time again isn't easy, but it's so worth it to deepen your relationships with those around you. It's a sign that you care enough about that person to carve some time out of your busy schedule and attend their function. For this kid, all she wanted was to invite her grandmother to one of her events: an annual school concert for the choir she participates in. But this grandmother continually makes up last-minute excuses for why she can't go to the show. Instead of just telling her grandkid that she isn't a fan of live shows or that she's just plain uninterested, she's been letting her down for years. This year, the 15-year-old put her foot down in a sassy yet polite way, and at least one of her parents has her back. 

Up next, the internet was rather critical of this 22-year-old employee's tactic to get their colleagues to reply to their emails, because they "decided to start including the Chairman/CEO…on all emails." 




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Mother appoints her brother to be her 3 under 10-year-old children's unpaid personal chef: '[She] expect[s] me to make something every day for the kids'

Meals are undoubtedly one of the most important daily chores, along with sleep. Being properly fed is one of the things that everything else in a successful and happy life stems from. But providing healthy meals for your family isn't cheap… Have you seen the price of groceries these days? And the time it takes to cook and clean for an entire family can't be understated. So, undoubtedly, the combination of those two things, the time and the price of the actual food, would be supremely valuable. 

Of course, you can just trick your sous-chef brother into cooking for your three children instead. Surely, if he's willing to do it once for free, you can just ask him to do it again and again. Even when it comes to family, there's a limit to the favors you're expected to perform, and there's a point where demanding favors just becomes freeloading and entitlement




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Dad gets back at teenage stepdaughters for making his 16-year-old daughter sleep on the floor of their hotel room: 'I gave my daughter an entire room for herself'

Who knew that evil stepsisters were still a thing? One would think these two teenagers would get a grip and be kind to the Cinderella of this story, rather than lean into the Evil Stepsister caricature. Unfortunately, however, they could not help themselves.

This Redditor was traveling with his family for a memorial service, and his wife booked a hotel room for his daughter Shiloh and two stepdaughters to share. Things went a bit south when the stepdaughters insisted that Shiloh sleep on the floor. When the original poster (OP) discovered that this was going on, he told Shiloh to pack her things and immediately booked her a separate hotel room.

This ultimately backfired as the two stepdaughters went crying and complaining to OP's wife (their mother), accusing OP of playing favorites. The fact that OP's wife had the audacity to not hear and empathize with her husband's side of the story leads us to believe that this second marriage is unlikely to work out. For more stories like this, check out this post about some Thanksgiving drama.




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Stage mom of 16-year-old divorces husband via email, CC's his entire family and friend group: '[He's] unable to adapt to any change'

There's divorce, and then there's burning every bridge you've ever built! This stage mom of a 16-year-old is sharing her story about what happened when she and her husband decided to call it quits via email, and it is a messy story. 

I suppose every divorce is messy in its own way. Some couples face cheating allegations, with one partner losing trust in their spouse. Others realize they're just not compatible anymore, and have different life goals. And of course, it's always more complicated when family is involved, whether that's having a bunch of kids or having parents who live at home (or both). 

It's not like you can totally keep the public out of the loop when you divorce your spouse. You'll have to pack up everything you own and move, sign legal documents, and face big life changes. Still, the way this stage mom went about it had people on the r/AITAH subreddit calling her out for her behavior. Check out the full story below and see if you side with her or her husband. 

Up next, read about these employees who got fired almost as soon as they started the job, like one dude who refused to wear safety gear, telling the supervisor "no" to his face! 




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‘I’m not giving you my cat’: Entitled mom asks cat owner to ‘loan’ her their cat for her daughter's birthday party, owner refuses but mom shows up on their doorstep the day of the party

First and foremost, pet owners are very protective of their animals. Rightfully so, as you never know what kind of crazy is lurking around the corner. It's in the owner and their pet's best interest that they don't let just anybody hang around their animals or watch them unsupervised. 

If someone wants to be in an animal's company, they better go adopt their own! It's not up to pet owners to fulfill an entitled person's pet fantasy for a day, especially after they refused to do so on multiple occasions. The pet parent in this story experienced this first-hand.

An entitled neighborhood mom asked the original poster (OP) if they could lend her family their cat for her daughter's upcoming birthday party. Cats are not similar to dogs in the way they interact with humans, and the pet owner politely refused. They didn't want to put their cat in an uncomfortable position. The entitled mother doubles down and exclaims that the pet owner "owes it to the community" to have their cat, Mochi, attend her daughter's birthday party. 

The pet owner thought she got it through the mother's head that no means no, but the mother shows up at their doorstep with her daughter in an attempt to guilt-trip them. Scroll to read.




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Updated Alternate Oscars, circa 2019!




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Lamoda включила носки со Сталиным в список экологичных, этичных, инклюзивных и благотворительных товаров

Компания Lamoda в рамках проекта Lamoda Planet продаёт носки со Сталиным бренда Babushka как входящие в список экологичных, этичных, инклюзивных или благотворительных: Несмотря на некоторую двусмысленность такого позиционирования товара с изображением столь противоречивой исторической фигуры как Иосиф Сталин, носки действительно соответствуют одному из критериев Lamoda Planet: по определению этичности программы достаточно чтобы товар производился близко к потребителю. Это позволяет одновременно и снизить углеродный след при доставке товара, и поддержать экономику регионов находящихся рядом с покупателями. Бренд Babushka работает по оферте предпринимателя Вадима Квасова из Ростова-на-Дону.




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Happy Friday from Marlowe and Her Dad

Have a wonderful weekend, friends.




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Six unelected people forcing their unpopular christian nationalist agenda on a population of three hundred and forty million is not a Democracy. It is tyranny.

America has not been attacked like this since 9/11. Six unelected people forcing their christian nationalist agenda on a population of three hundred and forty million is not a Democracy. It is tyranny.




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Metapost: Today is the day for the comment of the week

Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger's The Enthusiast is that novel! It's even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out! It is Friday: the day of the week when I showcase the top comment that were posted on […]




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Saturday is for cheap love

Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger's The Enthusiast is that novel! It's even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out! Beetle Bailey, 11/9/24 I know it’s just because of basic newspaper comic strip art hackery, but it really […]




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Another day in my history of evolutionary thought class

Today I’m teaching a perilous topic: the eclipse of Darwinism. There was a period of several decades where you could make an honest intellectual argument against evolution, roughly from the time it was first published (1860) to the development of population genetics (say, roughly 1920). All the arguments since then are fundamentally garbage, but before […]




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We all need a pretty little spider to brighten up our day

Remember, pretty does not mean it doesn’t have a savage bite.




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Can we demand an ethical standard for government?

A common sense act has been introduced in congress, HR 926, asking for basic ethical requirements for the Supreme Court. It sounds like something that ought to be in place. This bill makes various changes related to the ethical standards, financial disclosure requirements, and recusal requirements that apply to Supreme Court Justices. Among the changes, […]





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Return of unpredictable president puts UK defence spending top of agenda

Politicians say we're living in dangerous times, and Trump is a lot less willing than Biden to pay for Europe's defence.




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O'Neill 'understands' hurt over Remembrance Sunday event

Sinn Fein's Michelle O'Neill responds to criticism over her attendance at a Remembrance Sunday event.






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Telegram: 'The dark web in your pocket'

The arrest of Telegram’s chief executive in France has ignited a debate about moderation on his app.




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Would you let AI plan your next holiday?

Artificial intelligence is being developed to help organise holidays, but is it any good?




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Worker shortage hampers datacentre boom

Despite offering high pay companies that build datacentres are struggling to find skilled staff.




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SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission blasts off

The expedition, funded by billionaire Jared Isaacman, will attempt the world's first private spacewalk.




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The environmental campaigners fighting against data centres

A growing global movement is seeing people object to data centres in their locality.




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Vodafone-Three merger could get green light, watchdog says

It wants commitments on prices and 5G if the creation of the UK's biggest mobile network is to go ahead.




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DNA firm holding highly sensitive data 'vanishes' without warning

Customers of Atlas Biomed are angry and worried about what's happened to the highly sensitive data they shared.




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eBookDaily Deal on The Aeronaut’s Windlass

Get it for $2.99 today!




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Norwescon Update!

Jim will sadly be unable to attend Norwescon this weekend as perviously scheduled. He sends his best to the attendees and convention and looks forward to seeing fans at future … Continue reading "Norwescon Update!"




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My dream holiday was a $30,000 scam

Social media is helping travel agents to impress clients, and sometimes to scam them.




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The seven-day-a-week life of a maid in Qatar

Maids in Qatar often work long hours without a day off, despite changes to employment law.




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School Report News Day 2013

So it's here. School Report News Day 2013 is upon us - and about 1,000 schools are due to take part, making the news that matters to them.

They will appear across BBC News - on TV, radio and online and on regional news programmes.

The project is now in its seventh year, and is bigger than ever. School reporters are in Canterbury to witness the enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, and we also return to the Olympic Park in London to examine the legacy from the 2012 games. And there's more - the BBC School Report website has full details of the range of topics being covered.

It is all a far cry from when we began. A small team started School Report with the aim of giving teenagers the opportunity to make the news they thought mattered. Giving them hours of BBC airtime was nerve-wracking, but it proved to be a success.

In that first year - 2007 - we worked with 12- and 13-year-olds in 120 schools. What I most remember from that year is seeing school reporters on the Six O'Clock News and thinking that this partnership between schools and the BBC had developed into something bigger than we ever thought it could be.

Fast-forward to 2013 and we are able to reach even further, both in geographical terms and into the BBC's output. We'll be broadcasting live from Radio Foyle in Londonderry, and taking over the flagship Radio 4 programme Woman's Hour.

There will also be a dedicated School Report Live channel accessible through the Red Button. We'll be updating a live news feed on our website and our @BBCSchoolReport Twitter feed throughout the day, so please follow what our school reporters are doing and let us know what you think.

Helen Shreeve is editor of BBC News School Report.




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iPhone and iPad app update

On Tuesday we are releasing an update to the BBC News iPhone and iPad app in the UK designed to make the app faster and more stable, with bigger, better quality images on the home screen.


We are busy doing some research and thinking at the moment about what people are looking for in our News apps in the longer term, but we thought that in the meantime, it was important to fix one or two bugs affecting some users of the existing app and to make it a better, slicker experience overall.

We want to make sure the current app remains a great way to get a quick overview of the top stories across a wide range of subjects, easy-to-scan on a mobile and, once the stories have loaded, handy to read offline too.

So, it will now be quicker to start up the app and to update it, and it should feel smoother and faster as you scroll and swipe through the screens and stories.

The larger homescreen images we've introduced serve two purposes:

  • first, you can see what's in them more clearly and there's more room for the headline
  • second, their positioning makes it clearer that you can scroll horizontally in each news category to reveal more stories (we noticed that in user testing some people assumed there were only three stories a section).

There is a new layout on iPad when you view the home screen in portrait mode - designed to show more headlines and make it easier to find the stories you're interested in.

Among the bugs that we've fixed is an issue that sometimes caused the app to get stuck when updating, and another where you sometimes saw duplicate stories within a single news category.

For our product team, these improvements required a fairly major reworking of the app's code. The good news is that they are now working from a more stable base which can be built on with new features and functionality. This revising of our code is something we've already done with our Android app, so we'll now be able to release upgrades simultaneously on both iOS and Android, which are by far the largest mobile platforms for us in terms of users. This latest update is already available internationally.

If you're a user of the app, or decide to try it out, we hope you'll like the improvements we've made. And as we think about our apps generally and plan our next steps, we'd like to hear about what you'd most like to see in future.

Steve Herrmann is editor of the BBC News website.




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Lineker to stop hosting Match of the Day, BBC confirms

The BBC has "agreed in principle a contract extension through to the 2026 World Cup," with Lineker.




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Archbishop of Canterbury resigns over Church abuse scandal

His resignation comes after a damning report into a prolific child abuser associated with the Church.




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First sighting of Belarusian political prisoner in more than 600 days

Maria Kolesnikova, jailed for her part in mass political protests in 2020, was allowed to see her father.




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Dating fraudster could have scammed 'hundreds' more women

Women were seen as targets by a serial scammer, but together they ensured he would face the truth.




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Cheap fix floated for plane vapour's climate damage

The warming impact of the vapour trails that emerge from airplanes is being discussed at climate gathering.




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The abuse scandal that led to the archbishop's resignation

Justin Welby said he had to take responsibility for failures since he was notified about abuse committed by John Smyth.




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GB para-cyclists top medals table

Britain's para-cyclists put in a strong performance at the World Championships in Los Angeles but the competition is improving.




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Defending champions miss standard

Defending Paralympic champions Dave Roberts and Liz Johnson must wait on the British Swimming selectors to see if they have made it on to the team for London 2012.




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'Nothing can bring a life back': Brazil dam collapse survivors speak as UK trial begins

A lawsuit against mining company BHP starts in London on Monday over the 2015 dam collapse.




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World's most indebted oil firm is headache for new Mexico leader

Claudia Sheinbaum inherits a buoyant manufacturing sector, but also a troubled state-owned oil firm.