Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Court hears allegation that film star was too intoxicated to recall assaulting Amber Heard
The film star Johnny Depp has been accused in court of suffering “blackouts” and having no recollection of his violent past because of his excessive drinking and drug-taking.
During his second day in the witness box at the high court in London, the 57-year-old actor faced allegations that his self-destructive behaviour and jealousy of his ex-wife Amber Heard led him to assault her repeatedly in the course of their four-year relationship.
The Ministry of Justice has announced that cleaners in its central London offices will now receive full pay if they are self-isolating or off sick. The arrangement, which will be administered through cleaning agency OCS, also provides back pay for cleaners who were sick or self-isolating after 1 April.
The announcement follows Guardian reports in June that the MoJ failed to investigate a potential Covid-19 cluster among its cleaners. The cleaners’ union, United Voices of the World (UWV), warned in April that workers felt forced to continue working despite feeling unwell because they could not afford to losewould have lost money.
Latest cases updates: how has Covid-19 progressed where you live? Check the week-on-week changes across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
The map shows local authorities where the number of cases has increased week-on-week and where it has fallen. Some of this is due to natural fluctuations, especially in areas where there are very few cases, and so a rise from 1 to 2 is a doubling. Increased testing also means that more cases may be being detected than previously, although the impact of this between one week and the next is likely to be slight.
Here’s the full story on a man in compulsory isolation in New Zealand who has absconded from a quarantine hotel to make a late-night “spur-of-the-moment” dash to the supermarket – before testing positive for Covid-19 the following day:
The Netherlands will be at the centre of upcoming talks over European spending on the coronavirus crisis, driven by a mix of traditional Calvinist frugality and political reality, experts say.
As part of the “frugal four” along with Austria, Denmark and Sweden, the Dutch have enraged many in the EU by putting the brakes on a €750bn (US$850bn) rescue package for the worst-hit countries.
Report warns of reoffending risk as 3,713 ex-prisoners in England lack safe housing
Thousands of high-risk convicted criminals, including those classed as violent and sexual offenders, were being released from prison in England into homelessness, increasing the likelihood of their reoffending, inspectors warned.
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP) said in a report that it was “particularly disturbed” to find that at least 3,713 people supervised by the National Probation Service, which is responsible for high-risk offenders, had left prison and become homeless from 2018 to 2019.
Review into vaginal mesh and other products reveals much patient harm was ‘avoidable’
An arrogant culture in which serious medical complications were dismissed as “women’s problems” contributed to a string of healthcare scandals over several decades, an inquiry ordered by the government has found.
The review of vaginal mesh, hormonal pregnancy tests and an anti-epilepsy medicine that harmed unborn babies paints a damning picture of a medical establishment that failed to acknowledge problems even in the face of mounting safety concerns, leading to avoidable harm to patients.
While ministers insist that it is too early to fully consider what lessons might be learned from the coronavirus outbreak, the UK’s death toll – the highest in Europe – is expected to prompt an inquiry into the handling of the pandemic.
In recent weeks, the government has been accused of seeking to pre-emptively shift the narrative on responsibility for the country’s response to the Covid-19 outbreak and blame others for what went wrong.
Bolsonaro’s diagnosis comes just three days after he had lunch at the home of the US ambassador to Brazil, Todd Chapman, in the capital, Brasília.
Also present at that Independence Day celebrationwere several top cabinet members, including foreign minister Ernesto Araújo, defence minister Fernando Azevedo, and the president’s son, Eduardo, a politician who is Steve Bannon’s representative in South America. The men were photographed without face masks.
Reports of Bolsonaro’s possible infection first emerged on Monday evening, with local news outlets reporting that he had been tested after developing coronavirus symptoms, including a 38C temperature and a persistent cough.
An MRI of Bolsonaro’s lungs was also taken, with the president telling supporters it had shown them to be “clear”.
The Department of Health and Social Care has recorded a further 155 deaths in the UK in its latest daily update on coronavirus. That takes the official UK death total to 44,391.
As we try to point out every day, this official headline total used by the government is not the actual total. That is because these figures only include people who tested positive for coronavirus and died. Taking into account the deaths of people who did not have a test, but where coronavirus was cited on the death certificate, the real total is more than 55,000.
The Welsh health minister has expressed concern that workers at a food factory where there has been an outbreak of Covid-19 might be spreading the virus because they take it turns to use the same bed.
Speaking at the Welsh government’s daily briefing, Vaughan Gething said there had been a suggestion that workers were coming off shift and jumping into a bed just vacated by a housemate who then went off to work.
I’m genuinely concerned about the conditions that people live within, not just in houses of multiple occupation where people may share bathroom and toilet facilities or kitchens, and the opportunity for contact indoors and surfaces is an obvious concern. You’ve heard that from our scientists, and others.
But in particular, if there is reality to the suggestion that people are sharing beds, there’s an obvious risk if people finish one shift, then return from that shift to get into a bed that someone has just got out of. So there are real issues here about accommodation and how it may be an unhelpful factor in driving transmission within that workforce.
Figure revealed by home secretary highlights concerns about slowness of compensation scheme
At least five people have died before receiving the Windrush compensation they had applied for, the government has revealed, reigniting concern about the slowness of the scheme.
No details were revealed about who these individuals were, but the figures appear to come in addition to a number of people interviewed by the Guardian, who died before they were even able to file a compensation claim.
Exclusive: Darrell and Darren Roberts face deportation to countries they have never visited
Twins who were born in London and have never left the UK face deportation to different countries in the Caribbean where they have no close relatives, their families have told the Guardian.
Darrell Roberts, 24, has been issued with a deportation notice informing him that the Home Office plans to send him to the Dominican Republic following a prison sentence, even though he has no connection with the country. He believes officials named it in error; his father was born on Dominica, another Caribbean island.
Many will face problems after Brexit unless they have physical card to prove right to remain in UK, critics say
EU citizens settled in the UK are being used by the Home Office as guinea pigs for a future digital-only immigration system, MPs have heard.
They will also face “significant problems” after Brexit unless the government provides them with a physical card to prove their right to remain in the UK legally, parliament’s Brexit select committee was told.
Vladimir Putin’s spokesman says Moscow will respond to Britain’s human rights move
The Kremlin has said it will take countermeasures against the UK after the British government imposed sanctions on Monday against senior Russian officials including a close ally of Vladimir Putin.
Putin’s press spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Moscow would respond to the decision by the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, to put 25 Russians on a new sanctions list. One of them is Alexander Bastrykin, Russia’s top prosecutor and the head of the investigative committee.
Official review finds airstrikes on civilians were ‘isolated incidents’
Britain is to resume the sales of arms to Saudi Arabia that could be used in the Yemeni conflict just over a year after the court of appeal ruled them unlawful because ministers had not properly assessed the risk to civilian casualties.
In a written statement, the trade secretary, Liz Truss, said sales would restart after an official review concluded there had been only “isolated incidents” of airstrikes in Yemen that breached humanitarian law.
Libel case against Sun newspaper over term ‘wife-beater’ begins in UK high court
Amber Heard, not Johnny Depp, was the one who started fights during their marriage, the high court has been told at the start of a libel battle involving the divorced Hollywood actors.
It was Heard who was “the abuser” and who invented claims that her former partner was a “wife-beater”, according to an opening statement submitted to the court by Depp’s barrister, David Sherborne.
Metropolitan Melbourne will go into stage-three lockdown for six weeks from 11.59pm on Wednesday after the state of Victoria recorded 191 new cases of coronavirus since Monday, the highest daily increase since the pandemic began.
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, announced that people living in the Melbourne metropolitan area and Mitchell shire would again be subject to restrictions, meaning they can only leave their house for work, education, exercise, for necessary goods or services or for medical or compassionate reasons until 11.59pm on Wednesday 19 August.
Decades after the 1994 genocide, the countries have contested the wording of a UN resolution to remember its victims
As the bodies piled up in the streets of Rwanda 26 years ago, no amount of spin could disguise the crime. There were no sealed camps; the massacres were in broad daylight. Yet in the UN security council the UK and US governments avoided the question of mass killing and saw only a civil war.
This bolstered arguments that nothing – they thought – could be done. It was scandalous, the Czech Republic’s ambassador Karel Kovanda told them, not to recognise that a genocide reminiscent of the Nazi Holocaust was under way. Kovanda remembers a friendly arm taking him aside as UK diplomats told him such inflammatory language outside the council would be “unhelpful”.
PM claimed there had been ‘loads’ of consultations over department which faces a £2bn cut this year
Boris Johnson has been accused of misleading parliament over who was consulted before the merger of the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Sarah Champion, chair of the international development committee (IDC), said despite the prime minister’s assurances that there had been “massive consultation” ahead of the announcement last month, evidence suggested there had not been.
Measures target individuals in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Myanmar and North Korea
The UK set itself on a diplomatic collision course with one of its key allies after introducing long-awaited sanctions against human rights abusers, including a close aide to the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
Long-awaited UK government sanctions against human rights abusers, including a close aide to the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, have been unveiled by the foreign secretary.