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Liz Truss Fast Facts

(CNN) — Here’s a look at the life of Liz Truss, former prime minister of the United Kingdom.

Personal

Birth date: July 26, 1975

Birth place: Oxford, England

Birth name: Mary Elizabeth Truss

Father: John Kenneth Truss, math professor

Mother: Priscilla (Grasby) Truss, nurse and teacher

Marriage: Hugh O’Leary (2000-present)

Children: Frances, Liberty

Education: Merton College, University of Oxford, B.A., 1993-1996

Other Facts

Youngest female cabinet minister in UK history.

Appointed the most ethnically diverse Cabinet in UK history.

Former president of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats.

Met her husband at the 1997 Conservative Party conference.

As a child, joined her parents at protests against nuclear weapons and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Timeline

1994 – As a university student, Truss calls for abolishing the monarchy at a Liberal Democratic conference, “We do not believe people are born to rule.”

1996 – Truss joins the Conservative Party.

1996-2000 – Works for Shell, eventually becoming a commercial manager.

2000-2005 – Economic director at Cable & Wireless.

2006-2010 – Councillor in the London borough of Greenwich.

May 2006 – A Daily Mail article exposes an extramarital affair between Truss and MP Mark Field, who had been assigned to her as a political mentor. The affair is thought to have ended in June 2005.

2008-2010 – Deputy director of Reform, a think tank.

2009 – Truss is selected to be the Conservative MP candidate for South West Norfolk. After a demand by some local party members that she end her candidacy, citing her past affair with Field, Truss survives a vote and remains the candidate.

2010 – Elected MP for South West Norfolk.

2012 – Co-authors “Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity,” a book that describes the British people as ‘among the worst idlers in the world,’ who ‘are more interested in football and pop music’ than working hard.

September 2012-July 2014 – Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Education and Childcare.

July 2014-July 2016 – Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

February 20, 2016 – In a Twitter post, Truss announces that she supports the “Remain” position on Brexit.

July 2016-June 2017 – Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice

June 2017 – Truss is demoted to chief secretary to the Treasury. She serves in the position until July 2019.

October 11, 2017 – Truss tells BBC2 she would now vote to leave the European Union if the Brexit referendum were to be held again, “I have changed my mind….I believed that there would be major economic problems. Those haven’t come to pass and I have also seen the opportunities.”

July 2019-September 2021 – Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade.

September 2019 – Is appointed minister for women and equalities.

December 2019 – Is appointed chief post-Brexit negotiator with the EU, tasked with settling the Northern Ireland protocol.

September 15, 2021 – Is appointed foreign secretary.

May 17, 2022 – In a statement delivered to the House of Commons, Truss announces she will introduce legislation to make changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol, a portion of Britain’s withdrawal agreement from the EU.

July 10, 2022 – In an op-ed published in The Telegraph, Truss announces that she is joining the race to replace Prime Minister Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party.

September 5, 2022 – Is elected leader of the Conservative Party. In her victory speech, Truss promises a “bold plan” to cut taxes and build economic growth.

September 6, 2022 – Appointed prime minister by Queen Elizabeth II at Balmoral Castle.

September 20-21, 2022 – In her first foreign trip as prime minister, Truss meets with foreign leaders at the United Nations General Assembly, including US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron.

September 23, 2022 – Truss’ government announces sweeping tax cuts which would wipe £45 billion ($50 billion) off government revenues over the next five years, representing the largest cuts in 50 years.

October 3, 2022 – Truss cancels her plan to slash the top rate of income tax, after a rebellion among lawmakers and a week of financial and economic turmoil.

October 14, 2022 – Truss says she is scrapping plans to reverse a rise in business taxes, a move that will save £18 billion ($20 billion), after a revolt by investors and members of her own Conservative Party worried about the impact of soaring government borrowing at a time of decades-high inflation. Truss also fires finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng.

October 20, 2022 – Truss announces her intention to resign just six weeks into her term after a growing number of her own Conservative Party’s lawmakers say they cannot support her any longer. Rishi Sunak officially takes over on October 25.

July 4, 2024 – Loses her parliamentary seat in the UK election.

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Fireball over New York City was a rare meteorite containing evidence of extraterrestrial water

By WTOP Staff
(CNN) — A meteorite weighing more than 2 pounds (1 kilogram) that crashed through the roof of a New Jersey home two years ago could shed light on ancient water in the solar system.Observers across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania reported seeing a fireball streaking across the sky during the daytime on July 16, 2024. As the object whizzed by just south of the Statue of Liberty, it caused a sonic boom felt by New York City and New Jersey residents.The spectacle came from a space rock, estimated to be the size of a heavy airline bag, that zipped through Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 32,000 miles per hour (14.4 kilometers per second).Unlike some meteorites, this space rock was particularly fragile, and it broke apart about 22 miles (35.4 kilometers) aboveground. Newark Liberty International Airport’s Doppler weather radar detected a cloud of fragments falling to the ground from Staten Island into New Jersey.Only one fragment was recovered, and that’s because it punched through the ceiling of a master bedroom in a Hillsborough, New Jersey, home.The impact caused no injuries, and the homeowners quickly put on disposable gloves and collected the black fragments and dust from the bed and carpet using aluminum foil and glass jars, said Peter Jenniskens, senior research scientist at the SETI Institute and NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.Jenniskens is the lead author of a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances that detailed an analysis of the Hillsborough meteorite.The homeowners also patched the roof of their house before rain fell that evening — a crucial step because the fragile meteor is porous and sucks in water from the air, Jenniskens said.Such quick thinking prevented the meteorite from being overly contaminated. Scientists were able to study the object. The analysis revealed it to be a rare, primitive type of meteorite that provides a window into the early solar system.“We detected a complex suite of amino acids, the fundamental building blocks of proteins, in water extracts of the Hillsborough meteorite,” said study coauthor Dr. Danny Glavin, senior scientist for the Sample Return in the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.“Most of the amino acids detected in Hillsborough are rare or nonexistent in life on Earth, so they are truly extraterrestrial in origin.”A salty, cosmic time capsuleA detailed analysis of the Hillsborough meteorite showed it was a CM-type carbonaceous chondrite. The C stands for carbonaceous, while the M signifies the Mighei meteorite, a carbonaceous chondrite that fell in Ukraine in 1889.These space rocks are remnants of rocky bodies that were streaking around during the early days of the solar system and contain hydrated minerals and organic compounds.There are two types of primitive CM meteorites — CM1 and CM2 — and the biggest difference between them is how much water altered their composition while they were attached to a larger asteroid.The researchers classified the Hillsborough meteorite as a CM½ since it exists as an intermediate between the two types. The sample marks only the second time a CM½ meteorite has been witnessed falling to Earth, Jenniskens noted, but it’s the first one that researchers have been able to study in such a pristine sample. Similar meteorites that fell in Indonesia in 2020 dropped into the mud, Jenniskens said.“It is the first CM type meteorite that contained bits of rock that preserved the subsurface of the original asteroid,” Jenniskens said via email. “We really have a unique window here on the physical properties of the parent asteroid.”The Hillsborough meteorite may have once belonged to a larger space rock orbiting within the inner asteroid belt, located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.“Some time ago, a significant asteroid family was formed in a large collision and some 6 Myr ago a smaller collision destroyed one of these asteroids, from which a piece ended up in near-Earth orbit,” Jenniskens wrote. “That piece experienced heat/cold cycles from spinning in the sunlight and fragmented about 200,000 years ago. Then it still took that long to hit the small target of Earth.”Researchers detected high abundances of sodium, likely from icy brines within the original asteroid. As water evaporated on the space rock, it left behind concentrated salt minerals that could create molecules crucial for life as we know it, according to the researchers.The team also detected organic carbon and complex amino acids.“There are hundreds of amino acids in this meteorite and the majority of them do not occur naturally on Earth,” Glavin wrote in an email. “The suite of amino acids in Hillsborough was even more diverse than those found in pristine samples returned from the carbon-rich asteroids Bennu and Ryugu.”The researchers are working to identify the salt minerals within the Hillsborough meteorite and see how they compare with those identified in samples collected from Bennu and Ryugu during NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in 2020 and Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission in 2019, respectively.Fragments of the Hillsborough meteorite are being curated at the American Museum for Natural History in New York City.Delivering the ingredients for lifePrimitive carbonaceous chondrites are believed to be the type of space rocks that collided with early Earth and delivered organic matter.The Hillsborough meteorite “provides more evidence that meteorite delivery of organic matter to the early Earth could have been an important source of organic molecules necessary for the origin of life,” Glavin said.The discovery of brine on the asteroid is key, said Peter Brown, professor in the department of physics and astronomy at Western University in London, Ontario, noting it’s kind of a leftover “of percolating water or ice.” Brown was not involved in the study.The brine “is a really strong sort of indicator of how water has moved, evolved and in particular how it’s reacted with organics,” Brown told CNN.“Everything we can learn about how water changes this kind of primitive meteorite is super important to sort of astrobiology and early biology on Earth.”Water may have been preserved beneath the surface of the Hillsborough meteorite’s parent asteroid for an extended period, he said.Meteorites such as the Hillsborough one contain the chemistry of the early solar system because, while modified by water, they haven’t endured much heating, Brown said. Holding a meteorite like it feels more like soil or clay that falls apart, rather than a solid rock, which reflects its lack of exposure to heat — and a higher chance of preserving a snapshot of how water interacted with minerals and organics, he added.The swift, informed actions of the homeowners enabled the detection of the brine in the first place, Brown noted. Rainfall likely caused any additional meteorite fragments that fell outside to disintegrate.The homeowners quickly connected with study coauthor Mike Hankey at the American Meteor Society, who guided them through preserving the sample and minimizing contamination.“We knew almost immediately that what happened to us was incredibly rare and we felt a responsibility to preserve the meteorite for the scientific community,” the homeowners, who wished to remain anonymous to protect their privacy, shared via email. “It’s still surreal to think that this meteorite traveled through space for millions of years before ending its journey in our home. The entire experience has been incredible, and we’re honored to have played a small part in advancing scientific understanding through its study.”Reporting doorbell or dashcam videos of potential fireball sightings can help researchers track and collect meteorites – and ultimately improve their understanding of how the solar system evolved.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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