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 new law making it mandatory to wear a face mask in shops and supermarkets in England could backfire, a leading official in the EU’s agency for disease control has warned, after police officers said it would be unenforceable.
Dr Agoritsa Baka, chief expert on emergency preparedness at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), said persuasion could be more effective given the evident difficulties in policing the rule.
Ex-partners Ryder and Vanessa Paradis say allegations against actor are ‘impossible to believe’
Two of Johnny Depp’s former partners, Winona Ryder and Vanessa Paradis, have said he was never abusive or violent towards them and that allegations he is a “wife-beater” were “impossible to believe”.
The two women had been due to give evidence at the high court in London on Thursday via remote video links from the US.
Appeal court partially overturns earlier ruling that backed Home Office
Shamima Begum, the 20-year-old woman who left east London as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State, should be allowed to return to the UK to challenge the Home Office’s decision to revoke her British citizenship in person.
The court of appeal partially overturned an earlier ruling by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) this year, which held that she had not been illegally rendered stateless while she was in Syria because she was entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship.
PM says city should be in frame if Commons or Lords have to move during restoration work
Boris Johnson has confirmed that Downing Street is thinking of setting up a “government hub” in York, telling officials drawing up restoration plans for the Palace of Westminster that they should consider the city if the Commons or Lords have to be moved.
Restoration of the parliamentary estate, which is crumbling in many places and viewed as a significant fire risk, could cost an estimated £6bn, and the plans are still being debated.
Julian Lewis kicked out of parliamentary party after beating Boris Johnson’s pick
Boris Johnson was humiliated tonight after Chris Grayling, his pick to lead parliament’s powerful intelligence and security committee, was unexpectedly rejected in an ambush by MPs.
The former cabinet minister was defeated by fellow Conservative Julian Lewis – prompting an embarrassed Downing Street to kick the victor, who was accused of duplicitous behaviour, out of the parliamentary party.
Labour is poised to make a formal apology to antisemitism whistleblowers as part of a settlement designed to draw a line under allegations made during the Jeremy Corbyn era, the Guardian has learned.
The whistleblowers sued the party for defamation in the wake of a BBC Panorama investigation last year. No final settlement has been reached but sources said an agreement was imminent, prompting anger from Corbyn allies who accused the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, of capitulating.
Priti Patel says she is looking at giving people aged 18-23 a new right to come to Britain
The UK home secretary, Priti Patel, has said she is looking at giving young Hongkongers a new right to come to the UK.
Britain has made an offer of citizenship to 2.9 million people in Hong Kong eligible for a British national overseas (BNO) passport, but this excludes anyone born after 1997.
Boris Johnson has indicated he has not read a government-commissioned report setting out urgent measures needed to prepare for a possible second wave of coronavirus, telling the Commons only that he was “aware” of it.
Johnson was questioned at length by Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions about the study by 37 senior doctors and scientists, published this week, and the need for an effective test-and-trace system to mitigate any new outbreak.
A Black Lives Matter protester, Jen Reid, says she 'shed a tear' when she saw a sculpture of her replace that of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol on Wednesday.
The artist Marc Quinn had the new statue installed without council permission. It replicates a photograph of Reid with her fist raised taken after the statue of Colston, a 17th-century merchant, was toppled by Black Lives Matter demonstrators in June.
Arriving in two lorries before 5am, a team of 10 people worked quickly to install the figure of Reid, who said she had been secretly working with Quinn on the idea for weeks
Brazil has suffered 1,233 more deaths and registered 39,924 new cases, its health ministry has said. The country has now recorded a total off 75,366 deaths and confirmed 1,996,748 cases in all, making it the world’s second worst-affected.
As the figures were released, the far-right president, who has repeatedly dismissed the dangers posed by the pandemic, publicly acknowledged a second positive test that suggests he has not recovered. Bolsonaro told reporters he would get tested again in a few days.
Scotland could ask people arriving from England to quarantine, its first minister Nicola Sturgeon has said. In an interview with ITV’s Peston programme due to be broadcast in the next couple of hours, she has said:
Scotland would have the ability through public health measures to ask people to quarantine if they came to Scotland. And I’ve said, again, this is not political, it is not constitutional, I’m taking these decisions purely from a public health perspective. We do see prevalence of the virus at a lower level at the moment – although we’re not complacent – than we do in England.
But that’s not something I want to do if we can avoid that. I think the first thing we want to do is work very constructively as we do already with authorities in England to look at good outbreak management and where that requires localised travel restrictions, then rely on that in the first instance.
Well, my calculation is that if we are more successful in driving the virus to very low levels, getting as close as possible to elimination of it before a potential second wave in the autumn and winter, then we will build ourselves a much more sustainable foundation for economic recovery.
So, the judgement is that taking a couple of weeks, and that’s pretty much what we’re talking about here, longer to come out of lockdown, if that buys us a more sustainable recovery in the medium to long term, then that’s the right thing to do.
Restrictions imposed on Indian city of Bangalore and state of Bihar; Venezuela’s capital Caracas to go into a strict lockdown on Wednesday; Face masks mandatory in France; Follow the latest updates
AFP is reporting on Tokyo being on its highest coronavirus alert level after a rise in new cases - particularly in younger people, in nightlife areas and also in workplaces and in families - as experts said the rising infections were a clear “red flag”.
However, the move to a “red” alert does not mean the city will ask businesses to close or events to be postponed. Even during a national state of emergency in April, there was no “lockdown” in Japan of the type seen in Europe.
AP are also reporting on how virus restrictions in Australia are being reimposed, shutting businesses and curbing people’s social lives as communities try to curb a disease resurgence before it spins out of control.
Residents of Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, were warned today to comply with lockdown regulations or face tougher restrictions. Melbourne’s 5 million people and part of the city’s semi-rural surrounds are a week into a new, six-week lockdown to contain a new outbreak there.
Nurses not wearing face masks or staying two metres apart led to an outbreak of Covid-19 that shut an A&E unit after 70 staff at a hospital had to go into quarantine, an inquiry has found.
An investigation by Hillingdon hospital in north-west London has found that a nurse who had coronavirus unwittingly infected 16 others during a training session they all attended on 30 June, in what was described by a doctor as a “super-spreading event”.
Exclusive: Artist Marc Quinn leads secret mission to install resin-and-steel figure of Jen Reid at site of toppled Bristol slave trader
The statue of slave trader Edward Colston was replaced in Bristol on Wednesday morning – with a sculpture of one of the protesters whose anger brought him down.
The figure of Jen Reid, who was photographed standing on the plinth with her fist raised after the 17th century merchant was toppled by Black Lives Matter demonstrators last month, was erected at dawn by a team directed by the artist Marc Quinn.
There are 3 million eligible for citizenship, but many factors will determine if it is taken up
The Foreign Office claim that 200,000 Hong Kong citizens will want to come to the UK over the next five years to take up Britain’s offer of citizenship is a very broad estimate and not a forecast, diplomats have said.
Edward Argar, a health minister, has told MPs at the public administration and constitutional affairs committee that he first read the findings of Exercise Cygnus in a Guardian report
Face coverings protect workers and give the public greater confidence to shop, Matt Hancock has said. The health secretary confirmed in a statement to the House of Commons that shoppers would be required to wear masks while in shops and supermarkets. Those who do not will face fines of up to £100
Iran reports 179 new virus death as authorities announced a decision to once more shutter some businesses in the capital to contain the virus’ resurgence.
The reimposition of restrictive measures comes after the government had progressively lifted them from April to reopen its sanctions-hit economy.
Masks will become mandatory in all enclosed public spaces in France within the next few weeks, President Emmanuel Macron has said in a major Bastille Day interview.
Masks were already obligatory on public transport and recommended in shops, with many store owners refusing to welcome customers not wearing them.
Virgin Atlantic has announced a £1.2bn rescue deal to allow Sir Richard Branson’s grounded passenger airline to survive another 18 months and aim to return to profit in 2022, after four months without scheduled flights.
The privately funded recapitalisation package, a combination of cash injections, loans, and deferrals, was finally confirmed on Tuesday after weeks of talks with potential investors, after Virgin’s attempts to garner state support were rebuffed.
Senior officer says powers less effective if UK forces are denied access to criminal databases
The ability of UK police forces to detain criminal suspects from the EU will become slower and less effective if the government fails to seal a Brexit security deal, a senior officer has told MPs.
Richard Martin, a deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police and the lead for Brexit and international criminality, said forces would lose the “instant, at your fingertips” access to EU-wide databases on criminals and criminal activity that could be the difference between catching a criminal and losing them.