A woman has died after Storm Ali began to make itself felt with winds of up to 90mph across Ireland and parts of Scotland and England, as the first named storm of the season arrived in time for the morning rush-hour.

Irish police confirmed the woman died after a caravan was blown off a cliff in the west of Ireland. They said: “Gardaí at Clifden, County Galway, are investigating an incident which occurred at Claddaghduff, County Galway, this morning. “At approximately 7.45am, a report was received that a caravan had blown off the cliff at the above location. A search was carried out at the scene on the beach and after a short time the body of a female in her 50s was recovered.” About 55,000 homes and businesses, mainly in the south-west of Ireland, had been left without power due to the weather, the Electricity Supply Board said.(theguardian)…[+]

Cécile Kyenge, an MEP who had bananas thrown at her and was likened to an orangutan during her time as Italy’s integration minister, is being sued for defamation by the far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, for calling his party, the League, racist.

Kyenge will face trial in the northern city of Piacenza over comments made in an interview in 2014 during the Festa de l’Unità, a social democratic event celebrated across Italy each year. She was responding to a photograph posted on social media by Fabio Rainieri, who at the time was party secretary in the Emilia-Romagna region, depicting her as an orangutan.

On being notified of the trial on 14 September, Kyenge, who moved to Italy from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1983 to study medicine, wrote on Facebook: “Today in Piacenza: Salvini has summoned me to court because I said the League is racist. Judge for yourselves.”(theguardian)…[+]

Theresa May will reject Michel Barnier’s revised Irish backstop border proposals at the Salzburg summit because the EU is still insisting on customs checks down the Irish Sea if the two sides cannot strike a free trade agreement after Brexit.

The prime minister foreshadowed the argument she will make to the other EU leaders over dinner on Wednesday evening in an article in Die Welt, which said the proposed backstop was “unacceptable” because it did not respect “the constitutional and economic integrity of the UK”. May will arrive in Salzburg on Wednesday afternoon at an informal EU council during which will she will address Brexit over dinner and where EU leaders will discuss the issue again at lunch on Thursday in her absence.

The prime minister will also hold bilateral meetings on Thursday with the EU president, Donald Tusk, and Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, as she seeks to end the impasse over the future of the UK’s only land border.(theguardian)…[+]