Whilst studying for a research degree, don’t forget to register for a Sconul card, which allows you to to use the facilities of your local university library.
I have been using Lexis Nexis – a database of new reports including UK national and regional newspapers and major newspapers from around the world. Access is free to OU students and ALs. http://www.lexisnexis.com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/uk/nexis/auth/bridge.do?rand=0.598820122279174
I also use BBC news daily. It is a brilliant site and updated every minute of every day.
Feeds from JISC. http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/ provides access to UK academic discussion lists. You can search or browse by subject category to find lists on a specific topic.
Zetoc: http://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk/ is a multi-disciplinary database of 20,000 research journals, and 16,000 conference proceedings. You can set up alerts to be emailed a table of contents of newly published journals or set up author/title alerts. Zetoc RSS enables you to set up RSS feeds for journals in Zetoc. You can be notified if any articles, which would be retrieved by your search, are added to the database.