Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
A major appeal aimed at encouraging people to maintain links made with the natural world during lockdown and to raise money for environmental projects halted because of the Covid-19 crisis is being launched by the National Trust.
Police forces across the country are dealing with thousands of potential violations of quarantine rules involving holidaymakers who may not be self-isolating after trips abroad, the Guardian can reveal.
The requests for “further action” have been raised by Border Force officials and public health authorities, who have been tasked with ensuring that people returning from abroad are abiding by regulations designed to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Meeting of EU leaders this month will instead focus on post-Covid recovery and China relations
Boris Johnson’s hopes of a Brexit deal have been dealt a fresh blow as Brussels ruled out EU leaders intervening in the troubled negotiations at a summit this month.
According to EU diplomats, both the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, and Downing Street have lobbied for 27 heads of state and government to seize control of the talks given the current impasse.
Critics say Abbott’s views on women and homosexuality and the climate crisis make him unfit for role
Boris Johnson has appointed Tony Abbott as an official UK trade adviser, defying widespread condemnation of the former Australian prime minister’s record of misogyny and homophobia and his views on the climate emergency.
Abbott, whose consideration for the role prompted criticism from opposition parties, charities and LGBT and environmental activists, is among nine external advisers appointed to the Board of Trade. The board, revived by Theresa May, is intended to help shape post-Brexit trade policy.
Hundreds gather for funeral of high-profile, outspoken victim of government’s hostile environment
Hundreds of people gathered in a Wolverhampton carpark for the funeral of the Windrush campaigner Paulette Wilson, one of the most high-profile and outspoken victims of the government’s hostile environment who died unexpectedly in July, aged 64.
A horsedrawn carriage brought her body to the New Testament Church of God, where Wilson had volunteered for years as a chef cooking food for the local homeless community. The two grey horses pulling the coffin wore red, green, black and yellow headdresses, marking her Jamaican and Rastafarian roots.
Debt seen as stumbling block for release of British-Iranians including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe
The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has for the first time acknowledged that he is actively seeking to pay a debt to the Iranian government that could finally help to secure the release of British dual nationals including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
Wallace assured lawyers acting for the families that the government was exploring every legal avenue to pay the debt, which for the first time he formally acknowledged the government owes.
It’s the multibillion-pound industry that kept on growing, based on a bean that Britons couldn’t seem to get enough of: coffee.
Until, that is, the pandemic struck. As is the case with many businesses hit hard by coronavirus, the ubiquitous coffee chains that have powered city centres and high streets across the UK are in deep trouble.
It has survived a wartime recruitment crisis, a disastrous fire and a “horrible scarcity of whisky”. Now a Cambridge University members’ club is facing a surprising new challenge to its survival: the lockdown misfortunes of Pizza Express.
One hundred and eighty-five years after it was founded, the university’s Pitt Club – whose alumni include John Maynard Keynes, John Cleese and the Prince of Wales – is so close to financial catastrophe that it has been forced to make a desperate appeal to its lifetime members.
US president Donald Trump slammed House speaker Nancy Pelosi after the Democrat was filmed at an indoor hair salon with her face covering around her neck. Trump, a longtime critic of Pelosi, pounced on the opportunity to attack her over the incident.
“I’ll tell you what, she must have treated that beauty salon owner pretty badly. She uses the salon and the salon turned her in?” he said. “So I just put out that if she was set up, then she shouldn’t be leading the House of Representatives. I want the salon owner to lead the House of Representatives”:
A groundbreaking new comedy sketch show based on women’s sex lives during lockdown, starring Aimee Lou Wood and Miriam Margolyes, is designed to “claim the stage” for women, its co-creator, Joanna Scanlan, says.
Sex Lives, believed to be the first interactive comedy backed by the BBC’s commercial wing, BBC Studios, documents stories submitted anonymously by women and has proved a hit online.
Smoking appears to increase the genetic contribution to Covid-19 infections, a small study suggested.
The new coronavirus enters the body by hijacking proteins on the surface of healthy cells, in particular a protein called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2).
Liberia’s president George Weah has sacked the country’s top health official over his handling of coronavirus testing in the impoverished West African state.
Mososka Fallah, director general of the Public Health Institute of Liberia (NPHIL), was removed from his post for “breaches in the health and administrative protocols that guide the issuance of Covid-19 test results,” Weah’s office said in a statement.
National Audit Office study also highlights failure to get to grips with scale of challenge
Excessive secrecy about the government’s Brexit negotiating objectives and a failure to get to grips with the scale of the challenge hindered preparations for the UK’s exit from the EU, according to Whitehall’s spending watchdog.
Departments issued non-disclosure agreements when discussing plans that were meant to inform the public and the business community, the National Audit Office said. More than 22,000 workers were deployed across Whitehall departments on the preparations, which cost £4.4bn.
Rishi Sunak has been urged by union leaders to launch a wage subsidy scheme to prevent a “tsunami” of unemployment when furlough comes to an end this autumn.
Demanding the chancellor follows the examples of other leading European countries to avert a looming jobs crisis, the Trades Union Congress said a continental-style system of “short-time working” wage support could be used in Britain to save millions of jobs from redundancy.
The actor Robert Pattinson has tested positive for Covid-19, according to US media reports, halting production of the film The Batman just days after it resumed following lockdown.
A spokesperson for Warner Bros, the Hollywood studio behind the film, said: “A member of The Batman production has tested positive for Covid-19, and is isolating in accordance with established protocols. Filming is temporarily paused.”
Ministers say the UK has a greater testing capacity than other countries of its size, with 2.43 people tested each day for every 1,000 in the population. That compares with 1.15 in Germany and France, and one in Spain.
Rachel Reeves, Labour’s Cabinet Office minister and an ally of Sir Keir Starmer, has rowed back on her earlier calls for Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard to “consider his position.” She made that suggestion in an interview this morning. (See 10.09am.) But in a tweet issued some hours later, Reeves reverted back to the normal protocol which prohibits Labour leaders at Westminster from commenting on Scottish Labour’s internal debates and problems.
As I said repeatedly this morning, matters about Scottish Labour are for Scottish Labour. Keir, Richard and the whole of the Labour Party are determined to rebuild trust in Scotland, and take on the SNP’s domestic record ahead of next year’s elections.
Some of the best journalism on the coronavirus crisis has come from BBC Radio 4’s More or Less, presented by Tim Harford. But Harford, like all of us, does occasionally make a mistake and, in an interesting Twitter thread starting here, he explains how he got it wrong when he said the risk of dying from Covid-19 was the same as the risk of dying from a bath.
1/ Time for an apology and a correction. Seems that every newspaper in the UK is (correctly) reporting that I said the risk of catching a fatal case of Covid-19 is about the same as the risk of having a bath. I did say that, but I was wrong. Details below.
3/ Now according to this piece – the author of which should be held blameless – the risk of taking a bath is about 1 in 3 million (0.3 micromorts). But that can’t be right. https://t.co/6DBj7rv97W
4/ The correct claim is that the risk of dying in the bath PER YEAR is 1 in 3 million – 20-30 deaths per year in a country of 67 million people. https://t.co/MSJ6eP7k6S
13/ Covid is a killer. It’s killed 65,000 people in the UK, including a dear friend of mine. Don’t let anyone tell you different. But the daily infection risk from Covid is now low. People shouldn’t be terrified to leave their own homes.
Jean-Paul Enthoven forgave Raphaël for relationship with Carla Bruni but autobiographical novel too much
Is it possible to know anything, philosophers have pondered for centuries. In the case of two heavyweight French thinkers, the question is more: is it possible to know too much?
A respected French philosopher has publicly disowned his equally famous philosopher son, not for stealing his girlfriend, but for writing a book he claims has left him “heartbroken” and loved ones “drowning in a sea of ingratitude”.
A convicted sex offender has been found guilty of murdering two women whose bodies were found stuffed inside a freezer in his flat.
Zahid Younis, 36, was given a life sentence with a minimum term of 38 years for killing Henriett Szucs, 34, and Mihrican “Jan” Mustafa, 38. Szucs vanished in August 2016 and Mustafa went missing in May 2018.
New director general says he wants to focus on impartiality after accusations of bias
Tim Davie is to crack down on staff posting their views on social media in a move to restore the view of the BBC as impartial, and raised the question of slashing the corporation’s output by a fifth, cutting more jobs and potentially shutting TV channels.
The new director general said the BBC had to focus on impartiality to address accusations of bias from politicians on both sides of the political divide.
Warning that lack of agreement means more young people will risk lives crossing Channel
The EU has rejected a British proposal for a system to reunite children seeking asylum with their families in the UK or Europe, prompting warnings that more young people will risk their lives in dangerous Channel crossings.
The government had proposed a post-Brexit agreement to continue transfers of unaccompanied child asylum seekers to families living in either the UK or EU, although with no obligation on either side.
UK study shows dorsal fin of prehistoric mega-fish was similar height to adult human
The enormous size of a prehistoric mega-shark made famous in Hollywood films has been revealed for the first time in its entirety by a UK study.
Previously only the length of the Otodus megalodon had been estimated, but a team from the University of Bristol and Swansea University has determined the size of the rest of its body, including fins as large as an adult human.