BBC 2006: No British newspaper has taken climate change to its core agenda quite like the Independent, which regularly publishes graphic-laden front pages threatening global meltdown. Ian Birrell, the newspaper’s deputy editor, said climate change was serious enough to merit this kind of linguistic treatment. “If our readers thought we put climate change on our front pages for the same reason that porn magazines put naked women on their front pages, they would stop reading us” Reuters 2009: Independent News & Media is likely to close its flagship London title The Independent by Christmas, the publishing group’s second biggest shareholder Denis O’Brien said on Friday. “There’s no point in us as a company subsidising a newspaper that really nobody wants to read in the United Kingdom,” O’Brien told Bloomberg TV. “It’s not a relevant newspaper anymore and this newspaper’s going to be closed by Christmas,“said O’Brien, who has been at odds with the company’s board over plans to refinance a 200-million-euro debt issue that was meant to be paid in May.