Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Friday 17 Aug 2018

1. MPs want vaping allowed on trains and buses

A cross-party committee of MPs has called on private firms to relax bans on vaping, saying it should be allowed on buses and trains, in a bid to encourage more smokers to take up e-cigarettes. In a new report, the MPs say vaping is much less harmful than smoking and e-cigarettes should be given to smokers on the NHS to help them quit.

2. Obama and Trump praise late Aretha Franklin

Barack Obama and his successor as US President, Donald Trump, have paid tribute to Aretha Franklin, who died at 76 this week. Obama said her voice was “a glimpse of the divine” in which Americans could feel “our power and our pain”. Trump said Franklin “worked for me on numerous occasions” and praised her “great gift from God”.

3. House of Fraser cancels all online orders

Department store House of Fraser has cancelled all online orders and will refund customers after delays in delivery caused by an argument with logistics firm XPO. House of Fraser went into administration last week and was bought, without its debts or pension fund, by Sports Direct. The refunds may cost the firm millions of pounds.

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4. London terror committee to plan for Brexit

London mayor Sadiq Khan has instructed the city’s resilience forum, the body charged with planning for terror attacks and other disasters, to assess how the capital could cope with a no-deal Brexit. The forum will look at access to medicines, food, energy and the emergency services. Khan said there was “no choice” but to plan for no deal.

5. Emotional Elon Musk: ‘I’m working too hard’

Elon Musk, the PayPal billionaire who now heads electric car manufacturer Tesla, has given an emotional interview to the New York Times, in which he says he has been working so hard his friends are worried about his health, not leaving the factory for days on end. Musk says the last year has been “excruciating” but worse is to come.

6. Omarosa releases new ‘hush money’ Trump tape

Former White House adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman has released new audio recordings which she says show Donald Trump’s re-election campaign offering her “hush money”. The tape is a recording of a phone call from Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara. Manigault Newman has claimed there is a recording of Trump using the N-word.

7. ‘Terror threat’ claim over paedophile policeman

West Midlands Police told a judge that he should ban publication of the home address of a policeman who is a convicted paedophile to avoid a “severe threat” of terrorism. The judge agreed. Inspector Lee Bartram, 44, pleaded guilty to making more than 300 indecent images of children. The judge ordered that his address be suppressed.

8. Trump’s military parade postponed to 2019

After US President Donald Trump visited France on Bastille Day last year, he announced the US would put on its own military parade in Washington DC, which would “top” what he had seen. Now it has emerged it will be postponed until at least November 2019. It will cost $92m (£72m) and will not include tanks, for fear of damaging roads.

9. Low-carb diets like Atkins ‘could shorten life’

Low-carb fads such as the Atkins diet, popular as a way to lose weight, could shorten your life by up to four years, a new US study suggests. The study asked 15,400 people to remember how they had eaten over the past 25 years. Those who got 50-55% of their energy from carbs had a lower risk of death than high and low consumers.

10. Briefing: the pros and cons of opt-out organ donation

NHS England’s new “opt-out” system for organ donation, planned for roll-out by 2020, is “unlikely” to increase the number of donations, according to researchers.

Bereaved families blocked hundreds of organ transplants from registered donors The new system will mean that most Britons will be registered as organ donors unless they have explicitly stated that they do not wish to donate in the event of their death.

What are the pros and cons of ‘opt out’ organ donation?