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Manchester Airport passengers still without luggage after power cut

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By Jonny Humphries and Marc WaddingtonBBC News

Some passengers whose travel plans were thrown into chaos by a power cut at Manchester Airport face further delays as airlines rearrange grounded flights while others have been left without luggage and their final destinations.

Airport bosses said all its system were “running as normal” again, but urged passengers to check the status of their flights before travelling.

It said airlines would be in touch with travellers whose flights had been cancelled on Sunday.

The airport said it was “likely to be slightly busier than usual” throughout Monday due to passengers hit by cancellations.

People queueing at Manchester Airport

Large queues formed as flights were cancelled at Manchester Airport

However some outgoing passengers have reported arriving at their destinations only to be told their bags had not been loaded onto the flight.

Lloyd Cooke, from Stoke-on-Trent, had booked the 07:15 BST Jet2 flight from Manchester to Alicante on Sunday for a five-night stay with his daughter, Holly Cooke.

The 62-year-old charity chief executive told the BBC that as the baggage carousel at check-in was not functioning, they were told to leave their luggage to one side and checked in as usual.

The flight left after a 90 minute delay with all the passengers onboard unaware their bags had been left behind, Mr Cooke claimed.

Mr Cooke said: “We had no awareness there was anything negative going to impact us.

“The first we knew there was a major problem was when we were told, before we got off the plane, that some of the bags had not made it.

“Everyone was thinking that sounded like most had made it but there were some left behind, so you’re hoping yours has made it.”

Handout Lloyd Cooke Handout

Charity chief executive Lloyd Cooke said he felt Jet2 had been “disingenuous” by not telling passengers they would be flying without their baggage.

However, Mr Cooke said after making their way through passport control in Spain passengers were greeted by about 10 Jet2 reps – who confirmed the no luggage was coming.

“I think if they had said to people you have two options, fly without baggage or cancel and make other arrangements quite a few would have,” he said.

“We’re quite resilient but you have got families or people have medication or all sorts of important things they can’t do without. I feel like it was a bit disingenuous.”

Mr Cooke said the airline had said the baggage was likely to arrive on Tuesday, but he added: “I am not holding my breath.”

A spokesperson for Jet2 said it apologised and that the process of sending left-behind luggage had “already started”.

Handout Passengers waiting to collect their luggage in Manchester AirportHandout

Chaotic scenes greeted passengers waiting to collect their luggage on Sunday

Handout Passengers wait for news after disembarking a flight from Rhodes in the early hours of Sunday Handout

Passengers waiting for news after disembarking a flight from Rhodes in the early hours of Sunday

Similar problems faced passengers arriving at Manchester from other airports.

Ryan Jones and his fiancé Haf Griffiths were returning from an “amazing” 10-night stay in Rhodes and landed in Manchester at about 02:15 BST.

However, Mr Jones, from Deeside in North Wales, said they were kept onboard the Tui flight for about 30 minutes and told there had been a power outage.

“They finally let us off the plane and moved us quickly into Terminal 2 where it all came to a standstill for about two hours,” he said.

“Nobody knew what was happening, there were children crying their eyes out as nobody had had any sleep, nobody could tell us anything, there were just announcements saying there had been a power outage.”

Handout Ryan Jones and Haf Griffiths posing for a selfie in RhodesHandout

Ryan Jones and his fiancé Haf Griffiths said their holiday to Rhodes had been “tarnished” by their experience

Mr Jones said “everything started moving” at about 04:00, and passengers were put on buses into Terminal 1 where they went through passport control.

He said: “We thought ‘we’re through, it will be absolutely fine now, everything is sorted’.

“But when we got to baggage collection there were thousands of people standing and lying around.”

Mr Jones said there was no sign of any baggage arriving, and they waited until 07:00 with “nobody telling us anything”.

“There were people opening the flaps where the baggage comes onto the carousel to talk to the baggage handlers. They didn’t have a clue what was going on, there were arguments galore”, he said.

Mr Jones said staff began directing passengers to fill out an online form to arrange for bags to be sent to their homes, and he and Ms Griffiths left about 07:45.

He said: “We had an amazing time but this has tarnished it to be honest.”

The Tui airline apologised to its customers affected by the power cut.

A statement added: “Unfortunately, some customers had to travel home yesterday without their bags due to the inoperable baggage system at Manchester Airport.

“We would like to reassure customers that we will reunite them with their belonging as soon as possible. We appreciate our customers patience at this time.”

‘Knocking confidence’

According to Manchester’s live departure board, there were several delays of an hour or more, including a 07:30 BST flight to Ibiza set to depart at 08:30.

A flight to Bourgas in Bulgaria, due to depart at 06:05, was delayed until 09:41.

Travel expert Simon Calder told BBC 5Live that Sunday’s events could have a “serious” impact on aviation by “knocking confidence”.

He said: “There will be some people who take one look at this, look at the stress and the anxiety and the upset, and the not knowing what’s going on, and say ‘well I’m not going to do that’.

“That will affect an airport’s business, possibly more widely airports’ businesses.”

Mr Calder said the industry was “competitive”, with Manchester risking losing out to alternative airports.

He added: “If people are chatting in the pub and say ‘well I used Liverpool John Lennon Airport and it was fine, nice and uncrowded, seems to work OK’, then you might get a cohort of people actually moving away from Manchester Airport to another airport.”

People queuing at Manchester Airport after their flights were cancelled

Passengers whose flights were cancelled described the situation as “chaos”

The airport said it said it had deployed extra staff to help process the backlog, and said passengers should generally arrive two hours before their flights for short-haul and three hours for long-haul.

From the early hours of Sunday, outbound flights were grounded and scheduled arrivals were diverted to other UK airports.

By lunchtime, 66 outbound flights (25% of all departures) and 50 inbound journeys (18% of all arrivals) had been cancelled, according to aviation analytics company Cirium.

At about 19:30 BST, airport bosses said flights had resumed and vowed to hold an investigation into what happened.

Passengers whose flights were cancelled described the situation at the airport as “chaos”, and photos shared on social media showed large queues and stalled baggage carousels piled high with luggage.

Kelvin Knaver, from St Helens, had been due to fly to Amsterdam with EasyJet.

He told BBC North West Tonight: “It has been a mess. There’s such a backlog that it’s going to take forever to clear.”

EasyJet saw the largest number of cancellations. It said the delays were “out of its control” and that it was “doing everything possible to minimise the impact of the disruption”.

One Singapore Airlines flight from Houston in Texas was diverted to London Heathrow while another which departed from Singapore had to land at London Gatwick.

An Etihad Airways flight from Abu Dhabi had to touch down in Birmingham Airport instead.

Chris Woodroofe, the managing director of the Manchester Airport, said he was sorry for the delays and that staff were “making sure the impact [did] not carry on” into the coming days.

The disruption was caused by a “fault” with a cable at the airport, which sent a surge of power across the electrical network, he said.



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UK polls point to a big Labour win. The party fears voter complacency

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Labour leader Keir Starmer poses for photos as he visits the Vale Inn on June 27, 2024 in Macclesfield, United Kingdom. In the final week of campaigning, Labour outlined its plans to expand opportunities for young people. 

Cameron Smith | Getty Images News | Getty Images

LONDON — There’s been one main narrative since the U.K.’s Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a general election back in May — that the opposing Labour Party would win the vote with a landslide.

While voter polls may have differed in scale and methodology, the results have pointed in one direction, showing that the center-left Labour Party has around a 20-point lead on the Conservatives. Labour is on track to win around 40% of the vote while roughly 20% of the support is projected to go to the Tories, according to a Sky News poll tracker.

Reform UK, led by arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage, is seen with 16% of the vote, after eating away at Tory support, while the Liberal Democrats are seen gaining around 11% and the Greens with 6%. The Scottish National Party is predicted to win 2.9% of the vote.

Labour candidates and leader Keir Starmer have been keen to play down the level of support that the party enjoys, fearing voter complacency and the appearance of “having it in the bag” — a stance that could prompt voter apathy and a lower turnout of supporters at the polls, or a backlash from Conservative-inclined sections of the electorate.

“The Labour Party wants to be able to be convince voters that it’s absolutely central that they turn out and vote, because otherwise the Tories will win, and the Tories are desperate for people to think that they have still got a chance, and therefore it’s worth turning up,” Britain’s top polling expert John Curtice told CNBC.

Question marks have risen in the past over the accuracy of British voter polls, with previous projections over or underestimating support for various political parties. The errors have often come about because of inadequate sampling or of factors that are harder to control, such as voters being “shy” when polled on which party they intended to support.

Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer speaks ahead of the U.K.’s general election on July 4, 2024. 

Anthony Devlin | Getty Images News | Getty Images

This year, however, experts tend to agree that the polls show such a swing to Labour that, even if the scale of support were wrong, the overall result would be the same: a convincing win for the opposition party.

“My attitude is [that] a poll should be taken but not inhaled,” Curtice said wryly. “The point is, you shouldn’t be looking at them to provide you with pinpoint accuracy, they should give you a reasonable indication of the direction of travel.”

“It just so happens that because this is an election in which apparently one party is so far ahead, much as [it was] in 1997, the polls could be quite a bit out — but nobody will notice,” he noted, referencing the year when the Labour Party won a landslide against the Conservatives, ending the latter party’s then 18-year rule.

Labour ‘spin’?

The Labour Party itself is understandably keen to downplay the polls, with a spokesperson telling CNBC that the party doesn’t comment on projections, “as they vary and fluctuate.”

“Instead, we’re working hard to take our message of change to voters ahead of the only poll that matters, on 4 July,” the spokesperson stated.

On Monday, Keir Starmer said no vote should be taken for granted, asking his supporters to continue campaigning until polls closed on Thursday.

“The fight for change is for you, but change will only happen if you vote for it. That is the message we have to take to every doorstep these last few hours and days until 10 o’clock on Thursday night.”

“Nothing must be taken for granted, every vote has to be earned. The polls don’t predict the future, we have to get out there,” he told campaign supporters in Hitchin.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer during a visit to Hitchin, Hertfordshire, while on the General Election campaign trail. Picture date: Monday July 1, 2024. 

Stefan Rousseau – Pa Images | Pa Images | Getty Images

Labour’s former campaign and communications directors, Alastair Campbell, one of the chief strategists behind the rebranding of the party in the 1990s as ‘New Labour’ ahead of its monumental election win in 1997, told CNBC that he doubts current voter polls.

“I get really worried about about the way that these election debates are now unfolding, virtually everything in the debate at the moment is about these opinion polls,” he told CNBC two weeks ago.

“Apart from a few postal votes, nobody’s voted yet. And I just do not for one second believe that the Conservatives are going to get virtually wiped out, I just don’t believe it,” he said.

“I just think there’s something going very, very wrong with these polls, I could be completely wrong, and it’s true that Labour have been consistently ahead. But I just wish that, in our election periods, we would talk less about polls and more about what the parties are saying.”

'Something's going very wrong': Alastair Campbell casts doubt on UK opinion polls

Polling expert Matt Beech, director of the Centre for British Politics at the University of Hull, said Campbell’s position was designed to persuade Labour-inclined voters to cast their ballots.

“They want to make sure that they get as big a majority as possible. They’re all very much aware of [the lead-up to the election in] 1992 with the phenomenon of ‘shy Tories,’ when the polls said Labour would win and they didn’t …. [But] they’re not actually that genuinely worried about that. What they want to have a 1997-like landslide tsunami,” Beech told CNBC.

He added, “So if you keep banging on that drum [that the polls are not correct], you’re going to say to Labour-inclined voters, ‘please go out and vote.’ But it’s not that ‘we’re actually scared we’re not going to win, we are going to win comfortably. But we want a majority that enables us to push our agenda and we want this win to mean that we’re there for two terms.’



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Ad-supported Murdoch Netflix rival to launch in the UK

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Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation is entering the UK’s highly competitive free, ad-supported video streaming market.

Tubi will compete with the likes of Netflix, Disney+, ITVX, Channel 4’s streaming platform as well as the BBC iPlayer.

The platform has been quickly gaining market share in the US where, according to Fox, it has almost 80 million monthly active users.

In the UK, Tubi says it will offer more than 20,000 films and TV series, including content from Disney, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

The platform will also include a selection of British, Indian and Nigerian content.

UK viewers will be able to access content on the Tubi webpage and via a smartphone app.

Fox Corporation bought Tubi in 2020 for $440m (£348m) as the US media giant looked to attract younger audiences.

In recent years, streaming companies like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ have launched ad-supported services and raised subscription prices as they tried to boost revenues.

The moves came as they faced pressure to spend more money to grow their libraries of content as they try to attract more customers in an increasingly competitive market.

In March, Mr Murdoch’s TalkTV network announced that it would stop broadcasting as a terrestrial television channel and became a strictly online service.

The network launched in 2022 but struggled to attract viewers on its linear platform.

Mr Murdoch had hoped the network would shake up the broadcasting establishment by offering an opinion-led alternative to established outlets.

The media tycoon played a pivotal role in the development of the UK’s broadcasting industry by launching Sky in 1984.

Some commentators saw TalkTV as an attempt by Mr Murdoch to recreate his success with Sky.

Mr Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox sold its 39% stake in Sky to NBCUniversal’s owner Comcast in 2018 after losing a battle for control of the network.



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Biden knocks Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity By Reuters

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By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday criticized the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity that was seen as a win for his rival, former President Donald Trump, in forceful remarks from the White House.

The U.S. Supreme Court found on Monday that Trump cannot be prosecuted for any actions that were within his constitutional powers as president, but can be for private acts, in a landmark ruling recognizing for the first time any form of presidential immunity from prosecution.

“This nation was founded on the principle that there are no kings in America,” Biden said, adding that no one is above the law. With the Supreme Court decision, he said, “That fundamentally changed.”

Biden is running for re-election against Trump and has been sharply critical of his rival’s actions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, raid on the U.S. Capitol by Trump’s supporters, who believed Trump’s false claims that he had won the 2020 election.

© Reuters. U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks during the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center Grand Opening Ceremony at the Stonewall Inn to mark the 55th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village, New York, U.S., June 28, 2024. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

Biden, 81, was making his first set of remarks at the White House since his shaky debate against Trump last week led to calls for him to step aside as the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer for the election.

After he stumbled over his words on the Atlanta debate stage, his remarks and comportment will be scrutinized for signs that he is up to the job of running for re-election and of governing the country for four more years.





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