Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
As No 10 hopes to divide Labour on statues and TV archives, its leader has made practical demands on race inequality
Boris Johnson appeared to have had his say about the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests earlier this week, telling the nation in a carefully phrased article for the black newspaper the Voice: “I hear you.”
Yet on Friday morning, he dramatically returned to the fray, tweeting that taking down controversial statues was to “lie about our history” and warning would-be protesters: “The only responsible course of action is to stay away.”
Irish haulier Ronan Hughes faces 39 charges of manslaughter over smuggled Vietnamese nationals
The Irish alleged ringleader of a trafficking gang that transported a refrigerated truck in which 39 migrants died is to be extradited to Britain.
A high court in Dublin on Friday ordered the extradition of Ronan Hughes, 40, to face 39 charges of manslaughter and a charge of assisting unlawful immigration.
Watchdog fears that social media giant’s takeover of Giphy may reduce competition
The UK’s competition regulator has opened an investigation into the proposed $400m (£320m) takeover of gif search engine Giphy by Facebook amid fears that the acquisition may reduce competition in the UK.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is inviting comments about Facebook’s purchase of a company that currently provides gif search across many of the social network’s competitors, including Twitter and the messaging service Signal.
Three-phased plan for Brexit border checks welcomed as UK formally rejects extension to transition period
Full border controls on goods entering the UK will not apply until July next year the government has announced, as it formally notified the EU it does not want an extension to the transition period.
The announcement of a three-phased plan for Brexit border checks was welcomed by industry leaders but represents the most dramatic change to international trading since 1993 when the single market was introduced.
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.
Britain’s three biggest airlines have filed papers in the high court to seek an urgent judicial review of the government’s quarantine laws, which they say are having a devastating effect on tourism and the wider economy.
British Airways, easyJet and Ryanair say the rules, which came into effect on Monday and require passengers arriving from abroad to self-isolate at a single address for 14 days, are flawed and will cost thousands of jobs.
The front page of Saturday’s UK edition of The Guardian.
Guardian front page, Saturday 13 June 2020: Johnson 'stoking fear and division' over protests pic.twitter.com/YX3eiFZb7A
Requiring the wearing of masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus in areas at the epicenter of the global pandemic may have prevented tens of thousands of infections, a new study suggests.
Mask-wearing is even more important for preventing the virus’ spread than social distancing and stay-at-home orders, researchers said in the study published in PNAS: The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.
Interview with author’s first husband unacceptable, says abuse commissioner
The government’s lead adviser on domestic abuse has written to the editor of the Sun to condemn the newspaper’s decision to publish a front page interview with JK Rowling’s first husband, under the headline: “I slapped JK and I’m not sorry.”
In the letter seen by the Guardian, Nicole Jacobs, the independent domestic abuse commissioner, said it was “unacceptable that the Sun has chosen to repeat and magnify the voice of someone who openly admits to violence against a partner”.
Call to suspend ‘NRPF’ hostile environment measure that stops some people accessing public funds
Local authorities have called on the government to suspend the controversial “no recourse to public funds” immigration status for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic, to prevent thousands from falling into destitution and homelessness.
High numbers of people who have this status attached to their visas have been approaching councils for emergency assistance during the pandemic. Many are struggling to survive during the exceptional circumstances of lockdown, with no safety net, according to the Local Government Association (LGA), which represents councils in England and Wales.
Woman who fled as schoolgirl to join Isis cannot fight fair appeal from Syria, lawyers say
Shamima Begum, the woman who left Britain as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State, cannot effectively challenge the government’s decision to deprive her of British citizenship while she is in a detention camp in northern Syria, the court of appeal has been told.
At the start of a two-day online hearing, her lawyers challenged a ruling by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) this year that she has not been rendered stateless because she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship.
Another 1.5 million people in the US filed for unemployment benefits last week even as states continued to relax their coronavirus quarantine measures, writes Dominic Rushe and Amanda Holpuch in New York.
In just 12 weeks more than 44 million claims have been made for benefits as people lost their jobs. Rehiring appears to have started. Last week the labor department said the unemployment rate had dipped in May to 13.3% from 14.7% in April – although officials said difficulty collecting data meant the figure was probably 3% higher.
Nearly three-quarters of new cases of coronavirus are coming from 10 countries, mostly concentrated in the Americas and south Asia, the director general of the World Health Organization has said.
Speaking at the UN health agency’s member state briefing on Thursday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the global situation was deteriorating, even as Europe appeared to be over the worst of the outbreak.
More than 7 million cases of Covid-19 have now been reported, and more than 408,000 deaths.
Although the situation in Europe is improving, at the global level, it is getting worse. More than 100,000 new cases have been reported each day for the most part of the past two weeks.
Carolyn Fairbairn says most UK businesses cannot prepare for no-deal during Covid-19 crisis
Business leaders have pleaded with the government not to walk away from Brexit talks without a deal after Michael Gove claimed the Confederation of British Industry supported no extension to the transition period.
The CBI’s director general, Carolyn Fairbairn, said to crash out without a deal would be a “major block to recovery”.
Bristol man sees official record of his age as five years older than he says as theft of his identity
A young man who was given permission to stay in the UK after fleeing Gaza has been on hunger strike for more than 90 days in protest at what he sees as the “theft” of his true identity on his official records.
The man, who has learning disabilities and post-traumatic stress disorder, says he was wrongly assessed as being five years older than he is when he arrived in the UK. He regards his date of birth as a crucial part of his identity and a vital link to his late parents.
Anglo-Dutch conglomerate denies U-turn after finally choosing the UK capital over Dutch city as its HQ
Unilever has picked London as its home in an about-face on the company’s 2018 decision to “go Dutch” which was abandoned after a revolt by British shareholders.
Despite a fresh internal review that this time selected London rather than Rotterdam as the location of its headquarters, the Unilever chairman, Nils Andersen, insisted it was not a flip-flop but a pragmatic way to complete an overdue overhaul of its unwieldy corporate structure.
Test to promote informed discussion will ask users if they want to retweet unread links
Twitter is trying to stop people from sharing articles they have not read, in an experiment the company hopes will “promote informed discussion” on social media.
In the test, pushed to some users on Android devices, the company is introducing a prompt asking people if they really want to retweet a link that they have not tapped on.
On Radio 4’s Today programme, the comedian justified decision to portray former South African president in blackface
Harry Enfield has defended the use of blackface on television in an interview broadcast on Radio 4’s Today programme. In conversation with host Nick Robinson and fellow guest Ava Vidal, the comedian aimed to justify his decision to portray Nelson Mandela, describing it as “so wrong that it was right”.
Enfield, known for playing characters including Loadsamoney and Kevin the Teenager on television, said he had also used makeup to play an Indian soldier in a BBC programme, a decision he also deemed appropriate.
From protecting fishing communities to regrowing coral reefs, Guardian readers and environmentalists share how they’re working to defend the ocean
World Oceans Day, which took place on Monday, is marked by hundreds of beach cleans and events globally. Despite Covid-19 restrictions, environmentalists and readers from around the world shared how they are continuing to work to protect the ocean, and told us about the local marine issues that matter to them.
Over the weekend, there were no new deaths from coronavirus in London, Scotland or Northern Ireland. Slowly, the number of hospitalisations and deaths is falling across the UK. Rather than celebrating these early signs that the worst of the pandemic could be behind us, however, some scientists are warning of a second wave of infections – an increase in coronavirus cases in the coming weeks or months, which could occur even after a sustained fall in the number of cases.
These warnings often refer back to the 1918 flu pandemic. That outbreak killed tens of millions of people when it returned the following winter in a deadlier form after the first outbreak had been controlled. But there’s a confusing lack of consensus from scientists about whether we’ll see a second wave of coronavirus cases. Although the future is uncertain, we can imagine four scenarios for what might come next.
Vast vessels spent almost 3,000 hours fishing in officially protected areas in 2019
Supertrawlers spent almost 3,000 hours fishing in UK marine protected areas in 2019, making “a mockery of the word ‘protected’,” according to campaigners.
Supertrawlers are those over 100 metres in length and can catch hundreds of tonnes of fish every day, using nets up to a mile long. A Greenpeace investigation revealed that the 25 supertrawlers included the four biggest in the world and fished in 39 different marine protected areas (MPAs).
Scottish health board figures for tests on care home staff and residents reveal a “scandalous” postcode lottery, with significant divergence in how different parts of the country are coping with new testing policy.
Scotland’s health secretary, Jeane Freeman, pledged on 28 May to offer weekly tests to all 50,000 care home workers. Last Friday, after concerns were raised about the uptake of the policy, she sent a strongly worded letter to health board chief executives last Friday, telling them that directives were “not for local interpretation”, and that board-by-board data on the number of completed tests would now be published weekly.