Boots has apologised for the way it responded to a campaign calling for it to reduce the price of emergency contraception, which it sells for almost £30 per pill.

The high street chemist was criticised after refusing to cut the cost of the morning-after pill. It told the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) this week that making emergency contraception cheaper may mean it is “misused or overused”.

The apology, made late on Friday night, came after the women’s parliamentary Labour party (PLP) had written to Boots’ chief pharmacist to express “deep concern” about the company’s refusal to lower the price of emergency contraception.

It also came after people took to social media and called for a Boots boycott, with campaigners saying the company’s comments were insulting and sexist. Dr Sue Black, a UK government advisor, wrote on Twitter: “Disgraceful behaviour by @BootsUK please consider boycotting, I will be.”

Boots now claims that it is looking for cheaper alternatives to the Levonelle branded pill that it currently sells for £28.25, which is slightly more expensive than its own version, priced at £26.75.

The same Levonelle pill is sold for £13.50 at Tesco and Superdrug charges £13.49 for its own non-branded product.

Thousands of women take the morning-after pill in Britain every year, with The Guardian reporting that around 4% of British women of reproductive age use emergency contraception in any given year.

A spokesman for Boots told the BBC: “Pharmacy and care for customers are at the heart of everything we do and as such we are truly sorry that our poor choice of words in describing our position on emergency hormonal contraception (EHC) has caused offence and misunderstanding, and we sincerely apologise.”

Clare Murphy, director of external affairs at BPAS, said in a statement on the organisation’s website: “We really welcome this apology from Boots and are delighted that they are committed to lowering the cost of emergency contraception.

“We look forward to learning what the next steps will be and the timeframe for these changes. As other retailers have been able to introduce a price reduction across their stores we hope Boots will act promptly to ensure women have affordable access to this back-up method of contraception, which gives women a crucial second chance of avoiding an unwanted pregnancy.”

New White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said in his first interview since being announced to his new role that he hoped to “refine” the White House’s message going forward.

Scaramucci made his comments on Breitbart News’ SiriusXM program, “Breitbart News Saturday.”

He touched on a frequent criticism President Donald Trump makes towards the news media, which he often refers to as “fake news.”

“The good news is that we’ve diagnosed the problem,” Scaramucci told host Matt Boyle, Breitbart’s political editor. He tipped his hat to Breitbart as well, saying that the outlet had “been a great help in terms of exposure.”

Breitbart has consistently endorsed Trump since he announced his candidacy for president in 2015, and the outlet is known to run coverage that heavily favors the president while sharply criticizing his detractors.

Elaborating on how he hoped to refine the White House’s message, Scaramucci said that “we have enough outlets, whether it’s Breitbart, the president’s social media feed, all of the different apparatus that we have where people will allow us to deliver our message to the American people unfiltered.”

Scaramucci added that he wanted to penetrate through what he saw as “media bias” against Trump. “Because you can look at it objectively, frankly, and see that it isn’t fair right now,” he said.

Scaramucci was announced as the new White House communications director on Friday. That same day, White House press secretary Sean Spicer tendered his resignation, and multiple media reports said he did so in protest of Scaramucci’s hiring.

Picture a wunderkind.

The names of tech giants like Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Spiegel, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates tend to come to mind when we’re thinking about people who achieved extraordinary success at a young age.

However, the idea of the young prodigy is by no means a modern phenomenon.

From Alexander the Great to Alexander Hamilton, here are 18 individuals throughout history who accomplished incredible things early in life:

Alexander the Great conquered countries at 18

Hellenistic conqueror Alexander the Great accomplished extraordinary things during his short time on earth.

After the assassination of his father, Philip II of Macedon, Alexander ascended to the throne. Two years later, at the age of 18, he began expanding his domain. He spent most of his reign conquering lands from Greece to India. The result was one of the largest ancient empires and the spread of Hellenistic culture throughout the Mediterranean world.

Alexander never lost a battle. In the end, he simply burned out, succumbing to a fever at the age of 32.

Augustus Caesar (Octavian) became a Roman Senator at 20

Today, Augustus is remembered as the first emperor of Rome.

However, his career began long before securing this unprecedented role in 27 B.C.E.

In 44 BCE, Augustus was still known as Octavian. He was Julius Caesar’s 19-year-old grand nephew, adopted son, and heir.

On the Ides of March, Caesar was assassinated while the teenage Octavian was undergoing military training. Instead of fleeing in the aftermath of the murder, Caesar’s heir returned to Rome and threw himself into the simmering political intrigue.

For years, he navigated multiple shifting alliances, mass killings, and all-out war. Octavian finally prevailed in 31 B.C.E. when his forces defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium, according to Roman-Empire.net.

Joan of Arc turned a war around at 17

The bloody Hundred Years’ War devastated medieval France.

However, in 1429, a teenage peasant girl helped turn things around for the country.

Backed by a small coterie of supporters, Joan of Arc managed to convince her country’s leadership to give her a commanding role in the army. She was 17 years old when she chopped off her hair, donned men’s clothes, and rode off to battle, according to History.com.

Nine days after she arrived at the besieged city of Orléans, Joan beat back the English forces and became a national hero.

Unfortunately, she was eventually captured, given a sham trial, and burned at the stake by the English. She was only 19 when she was executed. The charges were debunked and she was declared a martyr several decades too late. Centuries later, Joan of Arc was canonized as a saint in 1920.

Blaise Pascal developed a calculator at 19

17th century French mathematician Blaise Pascal was ahead of his time on a number of fronts.

When he was 12, he began studying geometry. Seven years later, he began developing a handheld calculator.

Keep in mind, this was 1642 – the era before mass production. Pascal was a bit too far ahead of his time and the “Pascaline” calculator never made any money, as Biography.com reported.

Nonetheless, Pascal still went on to enjoy success as an influential mathematician, philosopher and physicist.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his first symphony at 8

Mozart was something of a 18th-century child star. He acquired enormous fame and success at an early age, only to burn out later in life.

The influential composer grew up listening to his father teach his older sister Nannerl piano. In “The Compleat Mozart” by Neal Zaslaw and William Cowdery, Nannerl recalled her brother’s early talents: “At the age of five, he was already composing little pieces, which he played to his father who wrote them down.”

With the help of his father, Mozart wrote his first symphony when he was eight. As children, Nannerl and Mozart toured around Europe, performing in various royal courts as child prodigies, according to Biography.com.

Mozart’s ensuing career resulted in over 600 works but little financial stability. He passed away at the age of 35, having changed the world of music forever.

Phillis Wheatley published her first book of poems at age 20

At the age of 20, Phillis Wheatley became the first ever African-American woman to be recognized as a published poet.

Wheatley had been sold into slavery as a child and purchased in Boston by tailor John Wheatley. His family taught Wheatley to read and encouraged her to write poetry.

When her “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral” debuted in 1773, it sparked conversation from the North American colonies to London. Wheatley became “a household name among literate colonists,” according to the Poetry Foundation.

The next year, Wheatley was emancipated when John Wheatley died. Phillis Wheatley continued to write and publish poetry for the rest of her life. Unfortunately, she fell upon hard times later in life and died penniless at the age of 31.

Alexander Hamilton became Washington’s aide-de-camp at 22

At the start of his career, Hamilton really was just like his country – young, scrappy, and hungry.

Thanks to the success of Lin Manuel Miranda’s hit Broadway musical, the American public is slowly becoming more acquainted with the story of Hamilton’s astronomical rise to success. Orphaned on the Caribbean island of Nevis at the age of 13, he supported himself and his brother by clerking for a local merchant. Eventually, prominent individuals on the island raised funds to send the bookish boy to King’s College (now Columbia University) in the North American colonies.

When war broke out, he joined up with the rebelling colonists and ended up serving as General George Washington’s chief staff aide. Hamilton was only 21 when the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. He proved himself to be a valuable addition to Washington’s staff, although he eventually resigned in order to pursue glory on the battlefield (he eventually led a charge to seize a redoubt at the Battle of Yorktown).

The connections he formed early on in the military, in addition to his budding legal career, served him well. At the age of 32, Hamilton ended up on the New York delegation of the Constitutional Convention. With some assistance from James Madison and John Jay, he wrote the Federalist Papers, which helped secure the ratification of the new, stronger Constitution.

Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette turned the tide of the Revolutionary War at 19

As it turns out, many of America’s Founding Fathers were quite young when the Revolutionary War broke out.

The Marquis de Lafayette was only 19 years old when he sailed from France to help the British North American colonies win their freedom. Defying orders from his own government, the Marquis (whose real name was Gilbert du Motier) swung by Continental Congress in 1777 and volunteered to serve the colonial cause for free.

Upon joining the Continental Army, Lafayette befriended General George Washington. However, the young aristocrat’s most important contribution didn’t occur on the field of battle. He helped convince the French monarch King Louis XVI to intercede on behalf of the American rebels.

These efforts paid off in 1780, according to USHistory.org, when the French sent forces to aid Washington. This proved especially crucial at the Battle of Yorktown, where Lafayette and other French allies helped defeat English commander Lord Charles Cornwallis.

It wasn’t immediately apparent at the time, but the battle would secure the colonies’ independence.

So, as it turns out, the US may never have been founded had a teenager with romantic ideals not decided to run off and join a rebellion.

James Madison joined the Continental Congress at 29

Long before he drafted the Constitution or became president, James Madison had a reputation for taking on a lot at once.

A Virginia native, “Jemmy” traveled up north to attend the College of New Jersey (now called Princeton University). He apparently overdid his studies and nearly had a nervous breakdown, but he still managed to graduate in 1771.

He was 25 years old when the colonies declared independence in 1776. However, Madison had fragile health, stood 5’4, and weighed around 100 pounds. Instead of seeking out a combat role like many other young Founding Fathers, he went into politics.

In 1780, he represented Virginia in the Continental Congress at the age of 29. Originally, he was the youngest member of the Congress. As Revolutionary-War.net noted, he quickly acquired a reputation as a legislative work horse.

William Pitt the Younger became prime minister of England at 24

To this day, William Pitt the Younger is still the youngest person to ever become Prime Minister of England. The politician rose to power in 1783 at the age of 24.

He ascended to the position under a cloud of controversy, according to the BBC. King George III had threatened to abdicate rather than allow George Fox back into the role. Pitt lost an election in Parliament, but refused to resign and ended up winning a general election the following year.

As Encyclopedia Britannica outlines, Pitt’s tenure was marked by all sorts of global upheaval, including the French Revolution and various wars with Napoleon Bonaparte. The young, standoffish minister’s popularity was low amongst his contemporaries, but he was also known as an adept debater and administrator.

Mary Shelley published ‘Frankenstein’ at 20

Born in 1797, Mary Shelley was the daughter of philosophers Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin.

As a teenager, she eloped with her father’s student, Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. However, according to the Poetry Foundation, tragedy and hardship struck when their first daughter passed away in 1815 – just a few hours after birth.

The next summer in Switzerland, the 18-year-old passed the time with a group of friends, including leading Romantic poet Lord Byron. The young people passed around ghost tales, according to Biography.com and Byron proposed that they all write one themselves.

This casual challenge amongst friends inspired Shelley to write the classic novel “Frankenstein.” The book was published two years later, when she was 20 years old.

Clara Schumann became one of the most famous pianists of the Romantic era at the age of 18

Clara Schumann was well on her way toward becoming one of the foremost pianists of the Romantic era at an early age. She began studying piano from the age of five; by the age of 16, she was famous throughout Europe, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

Her public career and popularity flourished when she was 18. That year, she performed a series of sold-out, packed recitals in Vienna, to rave reviews.

Galusha Pennypacker was appointed brigadier general at 20

This Pennsylvania native was the youngest person to hold the rank of brigadier general in US history.

He joined the Union Army around the age of 16, according to his New York Times obituary. There is some historical debate over Pennypacker’s exact age (in an era before widespread government IDs, it wasn’t uncommon for people to simply forget their date of birth). Regardless, Pennypacker’s subsequent rise through the ranks over the course of the war was quite dramatic and rapid.

In 1865, during the Second Battle of Fort Fisher, the young then-colonel was shot in the hip while leading a dangerous charge, as Mainline Today reported.

In recognition of his bravery, he received the Medal of Honor and was promoted to the position of brigadier at the age of 20. Pennypacker instantly became a bit of a celebrity, thanks to his youth. He had been too young to even vote for Abraham Lincoln, the very president who appointed him.

Ida B. Wells fought segregation at 27

Ida B. Wells was born in 1862, several months before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.

At 16, Mississippi native began working as a school teacher to help support her younger siblings after their parents died. Following in the footsteps of her activist parents, Wells began to take an interest in ending segregation.

She eventually moved to Memphis and began writing in local newspapers. In 1889, at the age of 27, she became the co-owner and editor of “Free Speech and Headlight,” a publication that focused on issues pertaining to racism and segregation.

That same year, her friend Thomas Moss’s successful grocery store was raided by a white mob. Three men were shot in the ensuing chaos and Moss was arrested. Before the case could go to trial, a mob invaded the local jail and lynched Moss, along with two other men, according to PBS.

This inspired Wells to become an investigative journalist. She shone a spotlight on how lynching served as a tool to oppress African Americans. Her work endangered her life – she had to carry a pistol for safety.

Her first pamphlet “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases” was published in 1892, when she was 30.

Nellie Bly exposed a dysfunctional mental asylum at 23

This famous American investigative journalist kicked off her career at the age of 16.

According to nellieblyonline.org, the teen-aged Elizabeth Jane Cochrane wrote a retort to a sexist article in the Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1880. The editor of the paper wrote back, offering her a job. She accepted and began publishing under the pseudonym Nellie Bly (the name of a popular song at the time).

At the age of 21, she took on a foreign correspondent in assignment, but was forced to flee the country after criticizing the Mexican government for imprisoning a local journalist. Tired of being pressured to take on theater and arts reviews, she quit, traveled to New York City, and talked her way into a job at Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World.

For her first big assignment, she pretended to suffer from amnesia and delusions and was committed to the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island, according to PBS.

She experienced firsthand the rancid provisions, abusive staff, and rats. Upon her release, Bly published a report that turned into a book called “Ten Days in a Mad-House,” prompting questions about the treatment of the mentally ill.

In 1889, the young journalist earned even more fame after embarking upon a solo trip around the world. Bly sought to top the protagonist of Jules Vernes’s “Around the World in 80 Days.” She ended up beating out Phileas Fogg and competitors from other papers alike when she arrived back in New York City in 72 days.

Lawrence Bragg won the Nobel Prize at 25

In 1915, Australian-born physicist Lawrence Bragg won the Nobel Prize for his work researching and examining crystal structures with X-rays.

He was only 25 years old. At the time, he was the youngest ever Nobel laureate, according to NobelPrize.org. He was only surpassed in 2014, when activist Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein exposed the Watergate scandal at 29 and 28

In 1972, a story about a burglary at the Democratic Party national Headquarters snowballed into a scandal that would engulf the federal government and bring down US President Richard Nixon.

At the center of it all were two young Washington Post reporters diligently reporting on the Watergate scandal. Bob Woodward was 29 and Carl Bernstein was 28 when they were first assigned the story together.

In an interview with NPR, Woodward and Bernstein recalled uncovering the connection between the Watergate break-in and other underhanded tactics and Nixon’s re-election campaign.

Their story resulted in a book, a Hollywood film starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, and a Pulitzer.

Nadia Comeneci achieved Olympic victory at 14

This 14-year-old Romanian gymnast vaulted, swung, and flipped to victory at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. Comeneci was the first ever gymnast to score a perfect 10.0 at an Olympic gymnastics event. That year, she also accumulated three gold medals and six more perfect scores, according to Biography.com.

However, Comeneci wasn’t finished, yet. Four years later, she went on to win two more gold medals at the Moscow Summer Olympics.

President Donald Trump pointed out that he has the “complete power” to grant pardons on Saturday. Trump’s assertion came amid reports that he was exploring the possibility of pardoning himself. The Trump administration has also begun ramping up its efforts to discredit special counsel Mueller’s investigation.

President Donald Trump pointed out his “complete power to pardon” individuals convicted of wrongdoing in his capacity as president on Saturday.

“While all agree the U. S. President has the completely power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us.FAKE NEWS,” Trump tweeted.

Trump’s tweet came on the heels of a Washington Post report that said the president and his legal team were looking into the limits of his pardoning power, and that Trump had reportedly raised the question of whether he could pardon himself as congressional investigations and special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia widen in scope.

There is no constitutional precedent addressing whether a president can pardon himself, but legal experts said that if Trump did use his pardoning power in that way, it would prompt a legal and political firestorm.

“This is a fiercely debated but unresolved legal question,” Brian C. Kalt, a constitutional law expert at Michigan State University who has written extensively on the question, told The Post. “There is no predicting what would happen,” Kalt said, adding that if Trump did seek to pardon himself, the issue would likely go all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Louis Seidman, a constitutional-law expert and professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, told Business Insider on Friday that whether Trump can pardon himself is “very questionable” as “a matter of constitutional morality.”

Seidman said the real question was why Trump would even need to pardon himself, given the protection from prosecution his office affords him and the unlikelihood that he would be charged after leaving office.

“The more serious threat is that Trump would either pardon everyone else or fire Mueller,” Seidman said. “My own sense, for what it’s worth, is that this outcome is very likely.”

But firing Mueller or issuing pardons “would be certain to ignite the kind of political firestorm that we haven’t seen since the Saturday Night Massacre,” he said, and Trump’s political opponents would undoubtedly paint it as obstruction of justice.

Indeed, it appears that Trump and his allies are ramping up their war on Mueller and planting seeds aimed at discrediting his investigation, possibly setting up a scenario in which Trump could fire the special counsel.

On Friday, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told “Fox & Friends” that she thought it was important for the American people to know about Mueller’s team’s potential conflicts of interest while they investigate Trump and his associates.

Host Ainsley Earhardt pointed out that some members of Mueller’s team had donated thousands of dollars to Democrats in the past.

“This is just a witch hunt,” Conway said in response, repeating a frequent criticism Trump makes towards the ongoing probe. “It’s all a hoax, and now they’re going in all types of different directions, but I think that the information you just shared is relevant information for America to have. People should know what folks’ past and their motivations and their political motivations are. These weren’t minor donations.”

Conway’s statements echoed repeated criticisms Trump and his allies have made against Mueller’s team in an effort to paint them as biased against the president.

Trump’s legal team has also warned Mueller to stay within the scope of his inquiry. Jay Sekulow, a lawyer on Trump’s team, told the Post on Thursday that they would go directly to Mueller to air their complaints if it became necessary.

“The fact is that the president is concerned about conflicts that exist within the special counsel’s office and any changes in the scope of the investigation,” Sekulow said. “The scope is going to have to stay within his mandate. If there’s drifting, we’re going to object.”

Bloomberg reported on Thursday that Mueller was expanding his investigation to include Trump’s past business dealings, and that he was drawing from an investigation opened by former US attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, who was fired by Trump earlier this year.

Sekulow cited the Bloomberg report, which said Mueller’s team was looking into, among other things, a 2008 business deal Trump made with a Russian oligarch.

“They’re talking about real estate transactions in Palm Beach several years ago,” Sekulow told the Post. “In our view, this is far outside the scope of a legitimate investigation.”

Trump also publicly warned Mueller against investigating the Trump family’s finances, saying that Mueller would be crossing a “red line” if he did so.

“Look, this is about Russia,” Trump said. “So I think if he wants to go, my finances are extremely good, my company is an unbelievably successful company. And actually, when I do my filings, people say, ‘Man.’ People have no idea how successful this is. It’s a great company. But I don’t even think about the company anymore. I think about this.

“‘Cause one thing, when you do this, companies seem very trivial. OK?” he continued. “I really mean that. They seem very trivial. But I have no income from Russia. I don’t do business with Russia. The gentleman that you mentioned, with his son, two nice people [Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov and his pop-star son, Emin]. But basically, they brought the Miss Universe pageant to Russia to open up, you know, one of their jobs. Perhaps the convention center where it was held. It was a nice evening, and I left. I left, you know, I left Moscow. It wasn’t Moscow, it was outside of Moscow.”

The Agalarovs catapulted to the national spotlight earlier this month, when it emerged they had requested that a meeting be arranged between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer with strong ties to the Kremlin last June during the presidential campaign. Mueller’s office asked the White House on Friday to preserve all documents related to the meeting, indicating that the encounter had also become a focus of the investigation.

One West Wing official told Axios on Saturday that the president was in the process of building a “wartime Cabinet” because he may really fire Mueller. In the event that happens, the official said, Trump will need “a group that can fight through what could end up being something quite amazing.”

“We’re going to see out-and-out political warfare, and not over … Medicaid,” the official told Axios.

That assessment was echoed by Matthew Miller, the former Department of Justice spokesperson under President Barack Obama, who tweeted that “we are headed for certain crisis. Trump just will not, cannot allow this investigation to go forward.”

Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.

Amid ISIS’ defeat in the Iraqi city of Mosul and ongoing fighting in its self-declared capital in Raqqa, Syria, the fate of its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, remains unknown.

Russia said in late June that it believed he had been killed in a bombing raid on Raqqa, but earlier this week Moscow admitted that it was unable to confirm the death and said it was getting contradictory information.

Despite an observer group saying Baghdadi has been killed, Defense Secretary James Mattis and other US commanders are skeptical.

“I think Baghdadi’s alive,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon on Friday, according to Military Times. Mattis has made similar statements before, and he told reporters that absent evidence Baghdadi was still commanding ISIS, it was possible he was acting in a religious or propaganda role for the terrorist group.

“Until I see his body, I am going to assume he is alive,” Mattis said.The US intelligence community has also seen no evidence Baghdadi is dead.

Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the leader of the US-led coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria, hasn’t confirmed the death either, but earlier this week he said he had no “reason to believe he’s alive. I don’t have proof of life.”

While Baghdadi’s whereabouts remain unclear, the group he led appears to be on the wane. Iraqi forces have recaptured Mosul – after ISIS fighters there destroyed the mosque where Baghdadi declared ISIS’ “caliphate” in summer 2014 – and US-backed fighters have advanced into Raqqa, though much hard fighting remains there.

Like Baghdadi’s fate, who will succeed him is also unclear. Experts believe that two lieutenants, ISIS war minister Iyad al-Obaidi and the group’s security agency chief, Ayad al-Jumaili, are the most likely candidates. Both served in the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein and then joined the Sunni Salafist insurgency in Iraq in 2003, after Hussein was deposed by the US invasion.

Leadership questions aside, the group looks to remain present in some form. In June, US officials were quick to note that ISIS remained a threat in both Iraq and Syria after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the group was at its end. And even with ISIS eroding, the tensions that fostered or accompanied its rise and other drivers of conflict are likely to endure.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush criticized his former 2016 presidential primary foe President Donald Trump on Saturday over his first six months in office.

Speaking at OZY Fest in New York, Bush slammed Trump’s chaotic style of governance and failure to focus on his policy goals. He singled out reports that Trump recently suggested that he may attempt to pre-pardon himself to preempt a federal investigation by independent counsel Robert Mueller.

“You get disciplined when your team says, ‘No, Mr. President, let’s stay focused on these policy objectives,'” Bush said. “Don’t disparage people, don’t go after Mueller, don’t say you’re going to pardon yourself or whatever. Don’t do all that. Govern.”

At times, the governor appeared to slip back into campaign mode, saying that Trump didn’t always represent the Republican party, noting he was registered as a Democrat in the district where OZY Fest was being held.

He also said the 45th president wasn’t serving as a symbol for the country to succeed.

“The president is the prime minister and the king. He or she, eventually, will be the symbol of the country, and also the prime minister responsible for making government work,” Bush said. “And right now, our president doesn’t view that job as important. Look at history. History is important. When presidents inspire us, we do better. And that’s what we need to get back to.”

Asked to prognosticate on the 2020 election, Bush said it was too early to make predictions, noting that Trump changes the political conversation each morning with his tweets.

“He unleashed five tweets today about stuff that jeopardizes his legal situation, insults somebody, goes back to the 2016 election, none of which is relevant to getting tax relief done, regulatory reform done,” Bush said. “This is going to be a long ride between 2018 in January, much less 2020.”

But the Florida governor also reserved some ire for members of his own party, knocking Republicans who were scared of crossing interest groups or conservative base voters, and suggesting that there should be term limits for members of Congress to spur politicians to act without fear of political retribution.

“If Barack Obama did something as it related to Russia and you say, ‘This is outrageous,’ then when your guy does the same thing, have the same passion to be critical,” Bush said.

Pressed on whether Republicans were afraid of Trump, he continued: “Does everything have to be a political calculus? ‘Oh my god if I say something, there will be an opponent, and there will be a third-party interest group come and give money to my opponent. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.’ This is not what public services should be about.”

Bush, who did not vote for Hillary Clinton or Trump during the 2016 election, has been critical of Trump repeatedly since the president took office. In May, he praised the president’s appointment of conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, but described the White House as chaotic, and advised Trump to “stop tweeting” because it gives “our enemies all sorts of nuances and insights” into Trump’s mind.

Though he ruled out another presidential bid, the former Florida governor appeared alongside a number of other former and potentially future candidates during the summit who were critical of Trump’s first six months.

Bush joined businessman Mark Cuban onstage later in the festival where they jousted briefly about education reform, and spoke after Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who delivered a forceful argument for single-payer healthcare.

Former Vice President Joe Biden also make a brief appearance during his wife Dr. Jill Biden’s interview with Katie Couric to address 2020 presidential rumors.

“My hope and expectation is some of the younger folks will come up and lead the way, but if they don’t, Jill’s running,” Biden said.

The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry said they regret how “desperately rushed” their final phone call with their mother Princess Diana was.

In an ITV documentary marking the 20th anniversary since Diana’s death, the royal brothers said their final conversaton with their mother was a brief phone call on the day she died.

Prince Harry was 12 when Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris in August of 1997, while Prince William was 15.

They said they spoke to their mother while they were having a “very good time” with their cousins at Balmoral, the Queen’s home in Scotland, according to the BBC.

“Harry and I were in a desperate rush to say goodbye, you know ‘see you later’… if I’d known now obviously what was going to happen, I wouldn’t have been so blasé about it and everything else,” William said.

He added that he remembers what his mother said, but did not speak in detail about the details of the phone call.

However, Harry added: “It was her speaking from Paris, I can’t really necessarily remember what I said but all I do remember is probably regretting for the rest of my life how short the phone call was.”

The documentary showed Prince Harry and Prince William looking through Diana’s personal album, talking about childhood memories, and speaking about her “fun” parenting – she apparently used to smuggle them sweets.

“Our mother was a total kid through and through,” Prince Harry said. “When everybody says to me ‘so she was fun, give us an example’ all I can hear is her laugh in my head.

He added: “One of her mottos to me was, you know, ‘you can be as naughty as you want, just don’t get caught.'”

“She was one of the naughtiest parents. She would come and watch us play football and, you know, smuggle sweets into our socks.”

Prince William added that the Princess “loved the rudest cards you could imagine.”

“I would be at school and I’d get a card from my mother. Usually she found something, you know, very embarrassing, you know, a very funny card, and then sort of wrote very nice stuff inside,” he said.

“But I dared not open it in case the teachers or anyone else in the class had seen it.”

Both Harry and William also spoke about the challenges they have faced since their mother’s death.

“It has been hard and it will continue to be hard, there’s not a day William and I don’t wish that she was still around and we wonder what kind of mother she would be now, and what kind of a public role she would have and what a difference she would be making,” Prince Harry said.

“To myself and William she was just the best mother ever.”

WIlliam added that the prospect of the documentary had initially seemed “quite daunting” but that they had wanted “her legacy to live on in our work and we feel this is an appropriate way of doing that.”

“We won’t be doing this again – we won’t speak as openly or publicly about her again, because we feel hopefully this film will provide the other side from close family friends you might not have heard before, from those who knew her best and from those who want to protect her memory, and want to remind people of the person that she was,” he said.

The BBC’s biggest female stars are calling on the corporation to tackle the gender pay gap immediately.

Some of its most high-profile presenters including Clare Balding and Victoria Derbyshire have written an open letter to Director-General Tony Hall containing more than 40 signatures.

The letter urges him to “correct this disparity” over gender pay, adding that it has been known within the corporation “for years,” according to The Independent.

It is a response to the corporation’s decision to publish how much its 96 biggest stars get paid last week as part of its Annual Report.

The information revealed that the BBC’s five best-paid TV and radio names are:

Chris Evans: £2.2 million-£2.25 million Gary Lineker: £1.75 million-£1.8 million Graham Norton: £850,000-£900,000 Jeremy Vine: £700,000-£750,000 John Humphrys: £600,000-£650,000

It also showed that only a third, or 34, of the BBC’s 96 highest earning stars are women.

The broadcaster’s best-paid woman is “Strictly Come Dancing” presenter Claudia Winkleman, who collects an annual salary of between £450,000 and £500,000. Her co-host Tess Daly takes home between £350,000 and £400,000.

The letter says the signatories are “prepared to meet” Mr Hall “so that future generations of women do not face this kind of discrimination,” according to The Independent.

“The pay details released in the Annual report showed what many of us have suspected for many years…that women at the BBC are being paid less than men for the same work,” it said.

“Compared to many women and men, we are very well compensated and fortunate. However, this is an age of equality and the BBC is an organisation that prides itself on its values.”

“You have said that you will ‘sort’ the gender pay gap by 2020, but the BBC has known about the pay disparity for years. We all want to go on the record to call upon you to act now.”

BBC director general Tony Hall has admitted the pay gap is not good enough and said the organisation must get better.

He told staff on Tuesday: “The disclosures highlight the need to go further and faster on issues of gender and diversity.”

Government statistics put unemployment in Britain at just 4.5% – a record low not seen since the 1970s. But the real rate of unemployment is four times that. We walk you through the evidence that shows why official unemployment numbers are so misleading.

LONDON – Unemployment in Britain is now just 4.5%. There are only 1.49 million unemployed people in the UK, versus 32 million people with jobs.

This is almost unheard of. The last time unemployment was this low was in December 1973, when the UK set an unrepeated record of just 3.4% unemployment.

The problem with this record is that the statistical definition of “unemployment” relies on a fiction that economists tell themselves about the nature of work. As the rate gets lower and lower, it tests that lie. Because – as anyone who has studied basic economics knows – the official definition of “unemployment” disguises the true rate of unemployment. In reality, about 21.5% of all workers are without jobs, or 8.83 million people, according to the ONS.

That’s more than four times the official number.

Here is how it works. First the official numbers from the ONS, showing unemployment at 4.5%:

For decades, economists have agreed on an artificial definition of what “unemployment” means. Their argument is that because there is always someone who is taking time off, or has given up looking for work, or works at home to look after their family, that those people don’t count as part of the workforce. In addition, the unemployment rate can never truly hit zero, because even when people change jobs they tend to take a break of a few weeks between them. Very few people quit on Friday and start at a new place on Monday. In the UK and the US, technical “full employment” has, as a rule of thumb, been historically placed at an unemployment rate of somewhere between 5% and 6%. When unemployment gets that low it generally means that anyone who wants a job can have one.

Importantly, it also means that wages start to rise. It becomes more difficult for crappy employers to keep their workers when those workers know they can move to nicer jobs. And workers can demand more money from a new employer when they move, or demand more money from their current employer for not moving.

The UK right now should be a golden age for workers – low inflation and low unemployment. Now is the time to get a job. Now is the time to ask for a raise. It doesn’t get better than this. Wage rises ought to be eating into corporate profits as bosses give up their margins to retain workers, and capital is transferred from companies to workers’ pockets. Trebles all round!

Of course, that isn’t happening.

Wages in the private sector have not started to rise. Public sector wage rises are capped at 1%. There has been a little uptick in new hire rates, but the overall trend is flat. This is part of the proof that shows real unemployment can’t be just 4.5%:

More importantly, wages are not keeping pace with inflation. Here (below) is wage growth after inflation has been taken out. Workers’ real incomes are actually in decline, which is weird because “full unemployment” ought to be spurring wages upward. Overall inflation ought to be driven by wage inflation. Yet wage inflation isn’t happening:

So what’s going on?

Why does Britain have no wage inflation, if the labour market is so tight?

The answer is unemployment is not really that low. In reality, about 21.5% of British workers are either officially unemployed, inactive, or employed part-time even though they really want full-time work. (The ONS has a chapter on that here.) Some of those people – parents with newborns, university students – may not want jobs right now, but they will want jobs soon. Even when you take those out of the equation, the true rate of people without jobs who want them looks like this, according to analyst Samuel Tombs at Pantheon Economics:

Note especially that the rump of “inactive” workers – the black bars – has stayed roughly the same for two straight decades.

The situation is worse from the perspective of men. The percentage of inactive male workers has tripled in the last 40 years, as more and more women are drawn into the workforce to replace them:

That last chart explains a LOT about politics in the UK right now.

On paper, Britain is supposed to be doing well – growing economy, low unemployment. So why did Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party get so many votes at the last election? (Answer: People still feel poor, their wages are not rising, and 1 in 7 workers is out of work.) Why did a majority of people vote for Brexit? (Answer: the economy for men is basically still in recession, and men don’t like losing their economic power, so this was a good way of “taking back control.”) And why are so many people trapped in the “gig economy,” making minimum wage? (Answer: Because the true underlying rate of unemployment means companies can still find new workers even in a time of “full employment.”)

So yes, it’s great that we have “low unemployment” in Britain.

But it would be better if economists (and the business media) were a bit more upfront about how our definition of “unemployment” actually masks the real rate of worklessness, which is quadruple the official rate.

Trumps nieuwe perschef had ook flinke kritiek op de rol van Rusland in Oekraïne en Syrië

Mentors of Level39, the tech incubator space in Canary Wharf’s tallest tower, were left confused after they found themselves locked out of the exclusive space with no explanation.

Several Level39 mentors told each other in an email chain leaked to Business Insider that they had been unable to access the space in One Canada Square in recent weeks. They believe that their free memberships have been terminated.

“I have tried to access Level 39 tonight but got denied entry at the ground floor security,” wrote one mentor. “They tried to call upstairs many times to verify me but no one picked up the phone.”

Another wrote: “The change was communicated to me by the front desk. Since then silence. Seems we’re not good enough.”

Level39’s group of mentors – thought to be around 50 people strong – have been allowed to access Level39 for free since it was founded. Free access was granted to mentors on the basis that they agreed to deliver a certain amount of mentoring to the startup entrepreneurs based out of Level39 each year.

“This worked well and was respected,” an anonymous Level39 mentor told Business Insider. “Now they want mentors to give time still but also pay thousands a year for a desk.”

Level39’s mentors, which includes the likes of Bindi Karia, a former VP at Silicon Valley Bank, and Marco Mirko, SVP of information security at Citi, are now being asked to pay approximately £3,900 a year if they want continuous access to Level39.

Some mentors were also given free membership to ClubLounge39, an elite club where they could meet founders and corporate executives. The club was scrapped last December under new CEO Ben Brabyn.

Asif Faruque, the head of content at Level39, wrote an email to some of Level39’s mentors last Monday inviting them to become hot-desk members at a price of £325 a month.

“It’s pretty poor all round,” said a Level39 mentor. “I don’t know if Ben is looking for a new job or just doesn’t give a crap.”

Faruque told Business Insider that mentors who want to use the space on days when they’re not mentoring will have to pay for a membership.

“If anyone requires permanent, continuous access to Level39 they pay for membership,” he said. “That starts at £325/month. If a mentor is coming in to do mentoring, they do not (and have never) paid for access.”

Jordan Spieth went on an epic run on the final five holes to win The Open Championship, but it may have never happened if not for his caddie saving the day on the wild 13th hole.

At No. 13, Spieth hit his tee shot about 100 yards to the right of the fairway. After a nearly 15-minute delay, Spieth eventually decided to declare an unplayable lie and take a drop farther back on the practice range.

While Spieth had a much cleaner lie in the practice area, his shot to the green was completely blind and his own calculation of how far he was from the green turned out to be way off. That’s when caddie Michael Greller saved the day.

According to Spieth, he thought he was 270 yards to the front of the green and he wanted to hit a 3-wood.

“I walked up there and tried to do the yardage in my head, and thought I was somewhere around 270 to the front and Michael was like, ‘Buddy, you’re 230 to the front,’ somewhere around there,” Spieth said.

Spieth went on to explain that normally he would trust his own yardage calculations on odd shots like that, but this time Greller expressed confidence in his own and Spieth relented.

“And Michael told me, ‘No 3-wood, hit 3-iron,'” Spieth said. “If you asked me who has the better yardage, myself or Michael in a lot of situations, when we’re on a crazy angle, I’d pick myself. And on that one he seems very confident. He was very adamant about what club to hit, and it gave me the confidence to hit it, because sometimes when that happens I’ll still go with what I think. But he was right on.”

Considering where Spieth was aiming, if he had hit the ball 30-40 yards farther, he would have ended up hitting the grandstand behind the green, at best, or landed in the long rough, at worst. Spieth would have been facing a double- or even triple-bogey and almost no shot of winning the tournament.

Spieth did ultimately mishit the shot to the right. But thanks to Greller’s yardage calculation, the ball still ended up in a good spot, just to the right of the green.

“After I struck it, I didn’t like it because it wasn’t where we were trying to hit it,” Spieth said. “But I had some room, given the club I had and the yardage I had, which Michael was right on, fortunately.”

Greller’s work wasn’t done on that hole either.

Spieth eventually bogeyed the hole and for the first time all tournament he was no longer at the top of the leaderboard as he fell one stroke behind Matt Kuchar. But rather than feel the pressure of The Open slipping away, Greller convinced Spieth that the bogey save was actually a good thing considering it could have been so much worse.

“When that putt went in, I was really, really obviously excited,” Spieth said. “But I was walking off the green and Michael said, ‘Hey.’ He held me up, and he said, ‘That’s a momentum shift right there.’ And he was dead on. And all I needed to do was believe that. I was starting to feel it… Just his belief, when I know him so well, just fed over a bit. And all I needed was just a little bit of self-belief to be able to produce.”

Blue Apron received its first deluge of ratings from Wall Street analysts on Monday, and they were mostly bullish.

The meal-kit delivery service entered the public markets with a thud. After cutting its initial public offering price range, the shares barely traded above the new range of $10-$11 on day one, and tumbled 35% from the debut through Friday.

Analysts, however, see investors changing their views on the company even after Amazon launched its rival subscription-box meal kits.

Out of 11 new recommendations, Blue Apron received eight “buy” or “outperform” ratings and three “equal weight” ratings. There’s one “sell” rating from Northcoast Research’s Charles Cerankosky, who released his recommendation on July 11.

“Blue Apron is the leading player in the nascent meal-kit delivery market and addressing a large, multi-billion dollar market,” said Mark Mahaney, an analyst at Barclays, one of the lead underwriters of the IPO. He placed a $10 price target on the stock. Goldman Sachs, another underwriter, also had a buy rating on the stock with an $11 price target.

Blue Apron surged as much as 9% in premarket trading to $7.18 per share.

Amazon’s involvement in online grocery would be a “meaningful overhang for Blue Apron in the foreseeable future,” Mahaney said. However, Amazon’s $14 billion acquisition of Whole Foods supports the view that there’s a huge market opportunity for online grocery. Amid stalling revenue growth, it’s uncertain how much of the market Blue Apron would be able to capture, he said.

Youssef Squali, an analyst at SunTrust, said Blue Apron has a first-mover advantage in the meal-kit market. This brand recognition and a strong management team should help it achieve profitability over time, he said.

“There are a number of instances where the worst fears from the threat of Amazon’s potential entry into a vertical have failed to materialize,” Squali said. “As an example, Amazon’s entry into photo books (through a tie-up with District Photo) last year failed to have a noticeable impact on Shutterfly, a category leader in personalized print.”

Jordan Spieth won The Open Championship on Sunday thanks to avoiding a disaster on No. 13 and then surging on the final five holes to beat Matt Kuchar and claim the Claret Jug.

Despite Spieth playing the final five holes at five-under, this Open will forever be remembered for the bogey Spieth scored on the 13th hole after his tee shot landed an estimated 100 yards to the right of the fairway.

Spieth ultimately took an unplayable lie and dropped in the driving range. It was a move that allowed Spieth to get close to the green and save bogey on the hole, but it was how Spieth ended up in the practice area that left many people confused.

In the end, there was nothing terribly complicated about any of the rules that led to the shot, however, it was important that all three rules were followed and in a particular order.

The unplayable lie.

Everything started when Spieth decided to take an unplayable lie. At this point, Spieth has three options under Rule 28:

Stroke-and-distance option: This is simply go back and re-hit the tee shot. Lift-and-drop option 1: This would be simply to drop the ball within two club lengths of where the ball came to a rest, but not nearer to the hole. Lift-and-drop option 2: This would be to drop the ball anywhere behind the unplayable lie, but along the same line as the hole.

Spieth would later say that he did not want to go back to the tee because a shot from there would be no closer to the hole and thus would have ultimately cost him two strokes – one for the drop and one for hitting the tee shot just to get back to the same distance he was at with the unplayable lie.

Taking the first lift-and-drop option didn’t make sense because the entire point was to get away from the rough on the back side of the hill.

That left Spieth with Option 3, the one he ultimately chose.

The practice area was not out of bounds.

This one is technically a grounds rule, but if not for this little quirk at Royal Birkdale, Spieth may have never decided to take the unplayable lie.

R&A Chief Referee David Rickman explained that the first thing he was asked during the chaos was whether or not the practice area is in bounds.

“I was asked to confirm that the practice ground was in bounds and therefore it was available to Jordan, which it is,” Rickman told The Golf Channel. “It’s in bounds for the members here at Birkdale and therefore we kept it in bounds for the Championship.”

This left Spieth with the uneasy task of deciding where to drop the ball on the practice grounds.

The “temporary immovable obstructions.”

Once Spieth decided to take the unplayable lie and move back to the practice range, he then needed to establish a line to the hole. The problem was that there were several trucks along the edge of the practice area which fall under the provision of “temporary immovable obstructions” or TIOs.

As we saw during the broadcast, and later confirmed by Rickman using NBC’s aerial images, Spieth’s “line of sight” to the hole ran right through the middle of the trucks.

“You get what we call ‘line of sight,’ if that temporary immovable obstruction is on your line of sight,” Rickman said. “Unplayable-ball rule gets us into the truck, and then line-of-sight relief takes us not nearer the hole. We swing around on an arc and we come over [to where Spieth dropped].”

At this point, Spieth would move over until he was lined up with the edge of the TIO. From there he would move an addition length of “more than one, but less than two” club lengths.

That led Spieth to this spot where he was able to get close to the green – thanks to a huge call by his caddie Michael Greller – save bogey, and eventually surge on the final five holes to win The Open and be named Champion Golfer of the Year.

You can see Rickman’s full explanation here, via The Golf Channel: