Fine and dry weather expected for most, with possible showers in north-west, before cooler Monday
Most of the country will bask in fine and dry weather over the Easter weekend, with forecasters predicting that a new record for the hottest day of the year could be set on Good Friday.
Temperatures are expected to rise to more than 10C above average, peaking at 22C in some parts of the UK.
Continue reading...Medicines regulator says it is first in world to approve Valneva product
A Covid-19 vaccine developed by the French pharmaceutical company Valneva has been given regulatory approval by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, bringing the total number of jabs approved for use in the UK to six.
As the Covid pandemic swept the world, scientists began developing vaccines against it, with the Pfizer/BioNTech jab being the first in the UK to be authorised for emergency use by the MHRA in 2020. Since then the MHRA has approved the Moderna, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Janssen and Novavax vaccines, although, according to NHS England, Janssen and Novavax are not currently available.
Continue reading...ONS data shows slight falls in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with estimated one in 15 people infected UK-wide
Coronavirus infections have fallen slightly in most of the UK, figures from the Office for National Statistics show, although experts analysing the data say it is too soon to say whether infections have passed their peak.
The ONS data, which is based on swabs collected from randomly selected households, shows that in the week ending 9 April about 4.42 million people in the UK had Covid, about one in 15 people, down from one in 13 the week before.
Continue reading...News follows announcement last week that monarch, 95, would not attend Thursday’s Maundy church service
The Queen will not attend the Easter Sunday service in Windsor after pulling out of several events in recent months because of mobility problems.
Buckingham Palace said the Queen, who has experienced health problems recently, was not expected to attend the event on Sunday, although it is not known why.
Continue reading...PM insists east African country is safe and scheme will prove ‘very considerable deterrent’
Tens of thousands of unauthorised migrants who seek sanctuary in the UK will be flown more than 4,000 miles to Rwanda under a new set of immigration policies, Boris Johnson has said.
The prime minister insisted at a press conference that the African state, criticised last year by the UK for its human rights record, was one of the safest countries in the world. He also announced that the Royal Navy would take over patrolling the Channel to intercept small boats from France.
Continue reading...Mother is unlikely to survive without medical intervention, leaving her young son orphaned, say doctors
MPs and a human rights group have called on the UK government to repatriate a young British boy and his gravely ill mother from a detention camp in Syria, after doctors said she was at risk of dying and leaving the child orphaned.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it was reviewing the case of Zaid* and his mother, Maryam* – who was injured in an explosion in Syria in 2019 and left with shrapnel in her head – “as a matter of priority”.
Continue reading...London-listed company facing financial pressures after UK placed sanctions on key Russian client
The London-listed mining company Petropavlovsk has warned investors they may be wiped out though a potential sale, as it struggles to regain its footing after UK sanctions against a key Russian client.
The miner said it was facing financial pressures due to UK government restrictions on Gazprombank, which is one of Petropavlovsk’s main customers and buys all of its gold. Gazprombank, which processes most payments for the Russian oil and gas sector, has been subject to UK sanctions since 24 March.
Continue reading...Politicians, charities and rights groups condemn plans as ill-conceived, inhumane and evil
Politicians have described Priti Patel’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda as “evil” and “inhumane”, amid fierce criticism from refugee charities, which have said the move is ill-conceived.
The government is on Thursday expected to announce multimillion-pound plans for asylum seekers who cross the Channel in small boats to be flown for processing to Rwanda.
Continue reading...Latest updates: a Conservative MP calling for the PM to resign says he fears there are more fines to come for Johnson
More than 35 homebuilders have agreed to put £2bn towards fixing unsafe cladding on high-rise buildings in England identified in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower disaster, Michael Gove, the housing secretary, has said. My colleague Rowena Mason has the story here.
The Conservative MP Nigel Mills has told PA Media more about why he thinks Boris Johnson should go now (see 9.10am) and why he does not accept that this would be a mistake because of the war in Ukraine. He said:
I have two comments on that. The first one is, when will Ukraine be any better than it is now? If you told me this crisis would be over in three months’ time, then you might say, ‘well OK, let’s get this done [then] the prime minister can meet his fate’.
But the Ukraine crisis could last for a very, very long time. Are we saying there’s no chance of a change of prime minister for years?
Continue reading...Amess’s family make plea for greater kindness in society after ‘beyond evil’ attack on MP
The family of Sir David Amess said they would “for ever shed tears” after his murder by a terrorist assassin who was sentenced to “die in prison” for an attack “on the heart of democracy”.
Ali Harbi Ali, 26, was handed a whole-life tariff by Mr Justice Sweeney after being convicted on Monday of murdering the MP and of planning terrorist attacks on other MPs, including the cabinet minister Michael Gove, for two years before he killed Amess.
Continue reading...Affiliates of Scientists for Extinction Rebellion highlight climate science they say government is ignoring
Twenty-five scientists have pasted pages of scientific papers to the windows of the UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, and glued their hands to the glass to highlight the climate science they said the government was ignoring.
The scientists, affiliated with Scientists for Extinction Rebellion, swooped on the department’s building at 1 Victoria Street, Westminster, London, just after 11am. Doctors and health professionals staged a decoy action to give them space to get into position.
Continue reading...Three-year-old girl and five-year-old boy die after being taken to hospital following blaze on Friday
Two children have died after a house fire in Preston.
Lancashire police said the three-year-old girl and five-year-old boy died on Tuesday after they and their mother were taken to hospital on Friday evening. Emergency services had been called to the address in Coronation Crescent at about 8pm following reports of a house fire with several people trapped inside.
Continue reading...ICO finds insufficient evidence against those suspected of capturing footage of minister with colleague
No one will be prosecuted over the leak of CCTV footage showing Matt Hancock engaged in a clinch with a colleague in his office, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has announced.
The footage and stills of the embrace, which prompted his resignation as health secretary, were leaked to the Sun in June last year. It was most likely obtained by someone using their phone to record a CCTV screen, the ICO said.
Continue reading...Former Scottish Tory leader renews calls for PM to resign, in split from current leader Douglas Ross
Ruth Davidson, the former Scottish Tory leader, has renewed her calls for Boris Johnson to quit over the partygate scandal as she accused him of “traducing” the office of prime minister.
One of the first Tories to call for his resignation when the scandal first broke, Davidson echoed a handful of Tory MPs who confirmed on Wednesday they stood by their no-confidence letters after Johnson’s fine for breaching his government’s Covid rules.
Continue reading...Foreign secretary says 178 of those targeted helped prop up self-proclaimed republics in Luhansk and Donetsk
The UK government has imposed sanctions on another 206 individuals in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, including 178 people it said were involved in propping up the self-proclaimed republics in Luhansk and Donetsk.
Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, said the latest sanctions were imposed in a direct response to the “horrific rocket attacks” on a train station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, that killed dozens of civilians.
Vladimir Yakunin, a former head of Russian Railways who the Foreign Office said had close ties to Putin. The US had already imposed sanctions on Yakunin.
Igor Kesaev, the founder of the cigarette company Megapolis, who the UK says has a £2.9bn fortune.
Saodat Narzieva, “a pro-Kremlin oligarch with close ties to Putin” and a sister of Alisher Usmanov. She was hit with EU sanctions last week.
Continue reading...Jamaican minister’s entry to race for secretary general called ‘monumental error’ by Antigua
Patricia Scotland’s hopes of being re-elected Commonwealth secretary general are under threat, after Jamaica’s foreign minister, Kamina Johnson-Smith, announced that she was challenging Scotland for the post.
The decision has sparked controversy in the Caribbean, which had previously met to back Scotland’s bid for a second term. The Antiguan prime minister, Gaston Browne, has described Jamaica’s decision to break ranks as a “monumental error”.
Continue reading...GlaxoSmithKline’s £1.5bn Sierra Oncology deal comes after pressure from Elliott to boost its pipeline
The UK drug company GlaxoSmithKline has agreed a £1.5bn deal to buy a US cancer treatment developer, Sierra Oncology, as it tries to fend off pressure from the activist shareholder Elliott Management.
The deal will give Britain’s second-largest pharmaceutical company access to California-based Sierra Oncology’s momelotinib, a drug being tested on anaemic patients with a type of bone marrow cancer called myelofibrosis. GSK said the drug had “significant growth potential” and it expected sales to start next year, with one analyst predicting it could generate peak annual sales of about $1.7bn (£1.3bn).
Continue reading...Outfit worn by costume designer Sandy Powell bought by charity boss who has given it to museum
The costume designer Sandy Powell’s one-of-a-kind “autograph suit”, which was signed by more than 200 Hollywood celebrities and luminaries including Leonardo DiCaprio, Spike Lee and Donatella Versace, has been acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The suit, worn by Powell during the 2020 film awards season, was auctioned as part of a fundraising effort by Art Fund to save Prospect Cottage, the creative studio of Powell’s mentor and friend Derek Jarman. It was bought by Edwina Dunn, the chief executive of the educational charity The Female Lead, who has given it to the V&A.
Continue reading...Joint committee on human rights says plans contravene principle that human rights are universal
Dominic Raab’s proposal to replace the Human Rights Act with a British bill of rights is not evidence-based and will diminish protections for individuals, MPs and peers have said.
The criticisms by the joint committee on human rights (JCHR) are the latest directed at the planned changes, which the justice secretary has said will counter “wokery and political correctness” and expedite the deportation of foreign criminals.
Continue reading...Unusual move to seek legal clarification, which cannot reverse verdict, amounts to the ‘politicisation of jury trials’, says defence lawyer
The attorney general has referred the case of four protesters cleared of the toppling of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston to the court of appeal for legal direction.
In a rare move, which cannot reverse the not guilty verdicts, Suella Braverman is to ask appeal judges for clarification on whether defendants can cite their human rights as a defence in a case of criminal damage.
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