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News in Brief: 12/08/2014

EMPLOYMENT: Britain is becoming the “self-employment capital” of western Europe after an increase in the number of people supposedly working for themselves. 

The IPPR think tank said yesterday the country had caught up with the European Union average of 14 per cent of workers who are self-employed.

The number has increased by 8 per cent over the past year, faster than in any other western European country.

 

COURTS: A High Court judge revealed yesterday the lavish lifestyle of a “retired” crime boss and his actor wife — and told them they must pay for it.

The judge said the pair had a “liking for the more expensive items of life,” and it was a lifestyle “neither is inclined to lose.”

Opera lover Terry Adams, who became notorious as the head of a north London gang, failed to convince the judge that he and wife Ruth were too poor to pay £650,000-plus still owed on a confiscation order for the proceeds of crime.

 

HEALTH: TV star Tamzin Outhwaite criticised movie giant Disney yesterday for setting a dangerous example to young, impressionable girls with its skinny princesses.

Ms Outhwaite, the mother of two young girls aged five and one, hit out at Disney for the way it depicts its heroines, saying that anxiety about body shape begins early.

She said: “I don’t understand why you need to be skinny to play any character.”

 

COURTS: A teenager accused of posting offensive tweets about two Newcastle United football fans who were killed on Flight MH17 had the charge against him dropped yesterday. 

Mitchell Tace Chapman, 18, from Sunderland, was due in court yesterday but the Crown Prosecution Service has decided to discontinue the case.

An online fundraising page set up in their memory by Sunderland supporters has since raised more than £32,000.

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