Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
British passengers stuck on the cruise ship in Japan where more than 600 people have been infected with the coronavirus have have been told to stay onboard by the Foreign Office, while those who are evacuated face a 14-day quarantine in the UK.
Japanese authorities said those who had tested negative for the virus were allowed to leave on Wednesday, but the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) warned that passengers who disembark may not be allowed to board a British evacuation flight scheduled for later this week.
WikiLeaks published emails damaging to Hillary Clinton in 2016
Offer claim made at WikiLeaks founder’s extradition hearing
Donald Trump offered Julian Assange a pardon if he would say Russia was not involved in leaking Democratic party emails, a court in London has been told.
The extraordinary claim was made at Westminster magistrates court before the opening next week of Assange’s legal battle to block attempts to extradite him to the US.
Lawyers say suspected victims of trafficking have not received ‘adequate access to justice’
The Home Office is planning to deport vulnerable asylum seekers and suspected victims of trafficking on a new charter flight on Thursday, the Guardian has learned.
The flight will be going to Switzerland, Germany and Austria under Dublin Convention legislation, EU rules which require asylum seekers to claim asylum in the first safe EU country they arrive in and not move from one to another.
Hilde Van Acker and Jean-Claude Lacote are facing a life sentence over shooting businessman Marcus Mitchell
Two of Europe’s most wanted criminals, branded the “Devil’s couple” for their murder of a British businessman, have been extradited to Belgium after 23 years on the run.
Hilde Van Acker, 56, and Jean-Claude Lacote, 53, are facing a life sentence for the shooting of Marcus Mitchell, a businessman whom the couple conned out of £500,000.
A British couple who had been asking the UK government to
organise a repatriation flight for passengers stuck on a cruise ship in Japan will not be on the plane after testing
positive for coronavirus. David Abel said in a video on Facebook that he and his wife, Sally, were being taken to a hostel as there were no available hospital beds nearby. The couple, who are in their 70s, were diagnosed with the virus one day before the ship’s quarantine was due to end
Brussels aide says UK cannot have similar trade pact because of proximity to member states
Downing Street’s hopes of a Canada-style trade deal with the EU have been dealt a further blow after a senior adviser to Brussels’ chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said the bloc’s relationship with the North American country was a “different ball game”.
As the two sides prepare for the start of negotiations next month, Stefaan De Rynck highlighted the UK’s proximity to Brussels compared with Canada as a key factor, as well as warning that the trade talks could get “rather difficult”.
Inspectors in protective suits have been going door to door in Wuhan in an effort to find every infected person, the Associated Press reports.
Wednesday marked the final day of a campaign to root out anyone with symptoms whom authorities may have missed so far.
Britons returning home from the Diamond Princess cruise ship that has had more than 600 cases of coronavirus will be quarantined at the same NHS facility that housed people flown back to the UK from Wuhan.
The Department of Health said: “We can confirm that an accommodation block on the Arrowe Park NHS site will be used to isolate those returning from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan. They will be kept in this location for the 14-day quarantine period, with around-the-clock support from medical staff at all times.”
Former One Direction member reportedly handed over cash during incident in Hampstead, North London
Singer Harry Styles was reportedly mugged at knifepoint in London on Valentine’s Day.
The 26-year old former One Direction member was “threatened with a knife” on Friday near midnight, according to police, but was unharmed after handing over an unspecified amount of cash.
Government plans to take ‘full control’ of borders a disaster for economy and jobs, say industry leaders and Labour
Britain is to close its borders to unskilled workers and those who can’t speak English as part of a fundamental overhaul of immigration laws that will end the era of cheap EU labour in factories, warehouses, hotels and restaurants.
Unveiling its Australian-style points system on Wednesday, the government will say it is grasping a unique opportunity to take “full control” of British borders “for the first time in decades” and eliminate the “distortion” caused by EU freedom of movement.
The Italian luxury fashion house Prada has postponed a fashion show due to take place in Japan in May.
In a statement, the company said:
Due to the current uncertainty related to the spread of the novel coronavirus, the Prada Resort fashion show originally scheduled for May 21 in Japan will be postponed.
Repatriating passengers from the coronavirus-stricken cruise ship in Japan is not without risks, a medical expert has said.
Paul Hunter, professor in Medicine at the University of East Anglia, said:
Considerable care needs to be made to ensure that the passengers do not transmit infection between themselves or to cabin crew during the flight home and once back on home soil they do not act as a focus for the spread of the disease into their home countries – any returning passengers may be put in quarantine on their return.
It is well known that certain infections such as influenza and norovirus can spread rapidly on board cruise ships. Cruise ships take passengers and crew from all over the world, often passengers are relatively elderly, they spend most of their time on board indoors mixing with others.
The most likely [infection] route is direct person-to-person transmission when people are close to an infected person, but with currently publicly available information it is not possible to rule out other issues at this stage.
House of Lords changes rules after warning BAME workers excluded from facilities for mostly white peers
Parliament has been accused of operating a form of apartheid after a report found that minority ethnic staff were asked to show their security passes more often than white counterparts.
Black and minority ethnic staff who responded to a survey carried out last year also complained that historic parliamentary rules meant that they were not allowed to eat or drink in the same rooms or even use the same toilets as the mostly white members of the House of Lords.
Verhofstadt says it would be a ‘hell of a job’ to achieve success using David Frost’s approach
Boris Johnson’s chief Brexit negotiator has been accused of treating the EU and the UK as if they are “living on two different planets” after vowing to break all regulatory ties with Brussels.
Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian prime minister who has led the European parliament’s approach to Brexit, said it would be a “hell of a job” to secure a successful outcome from the negotiation using the British approach.
Politicians from WikiLeaks founder’s home country have flown to UK to visit him in jail
Boris Johnson should block attempts to extradite Julian Assange to the US, say two Australian MPs who have flown to the UK to visit the WikiLeaks founder.
Andrew Wilkie, an independent federal MP, said the extradition of Assange, who has been charged by the US with conspiring to hack into a secret Pentagon computer network, would set a dangerous precedent.
The 39-year-old has three weeks to sort out programme after Sajid Javid’s exit
The budget will go ahead on 11 March, the Treasury said on Tuesday, forcing the new chancellor, Rishi Sunak, to piece together a fresh tax and spending programme over the next three weeks.
A delay was expected after Sunak’s predecessor, Sajid Javid, abruptly quit his job after a demand by Boris Johnson that he sack his advisers and replace them with a team jointly managed with No 10.
On Monday, David Abel spoke in a video update on Facebook about the mental strain of being quarantined on a cruise ship in Japan amid the coronavirus crisis. ‘It’s all getting to us now – not just me, other passengers as well. It’s the not-knowing factor that is the real challenge,’ he said. The British passenger, who published video diaries from the Diamond Princess, tested positive for the coronavirus, along with his wife, on Tuesday
Bank warns of ‘meaningful’ job losses in UK and of impact of coronavirus outbreak in Asia
HSBC has said it will slash 35,000 jobs over three years as part of a major shake-up as it issued a warning over the impact of the coronavirus outbreak in Asia.
The interim chief executive, Noel Quinn, confirmed on Tuesday that plans to cut $4.5bn (£3.5bn) worth of costs would involve slashing about 15% of the group’s global workforce. “We would expect our headcount to decrease from the current level of 235,000 to be closer to 200,000 in 2022,” Quinn said.
Oceans are central to the story of civilisation – so why do so many of us feel disconnected from them?
It was on day 11, I think, that I stopped getting out of bed at all. I had already let my hygiene standards slip to the point that a large knot was starting to form in my hair. Later my mother would have to cut it out with scissors. She didn’t mind. We were all in the same boat.
I was nine years old, and nearly two weeks into sailing across the Atlantic with my family. My father had sailed all his life, and introduced my mother to it; and they spent years preparing to sail around the world. Including my little sister, that made four of us aboard a 52ft yacht – our home for four years from 2000, in which time we got from Dorset to New Zealand.
Figures obtained by GMB show safety at its UK warehouses could be worsening
More than 600 Amazon workers have been seriously injured or narrowly escaped an accident in the past three years, prompting calls for a parliamentary inquiry into safety at the online retailer’s vast UK warehouses.