Category Archives: UK news

South African scientists explore vaccines’ effectiveness against Omicron

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Crucial work will study how well current jabs work and whether they need to be updated to tackle new variant

Scientists in South Africa have begun crucial work to assess how well Covid vaccines hold up against the Omicron variant that has been detected in more than a dozen countries since it was formally reported last week.

The variant carries dozens of mutations that are expected to change how the virus behaves, including its ability to cause infection and how well it can hide from immune defences primed by vaccines or previous infection with an older variant.

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Sajid Javid outlines changes to Covid vaccine booster programme – video

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Sajid Javid has announced changes to the UK's coronavirus vaccine booster programme, including advising that all adults in the country should be offered third doses from just three months after their second vaccinations. Speaking in the Commons, the health secretary outlined this and other changes aimed at speeding up booster vaccinations as the government scrambles to limit the spread of the new Omicron variant

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Channel crossings are an English issue, says French minister

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UK accused of having a labour market akin to modern slavery that encourages people to make risky crossings

Senior French ministers have accused the UK of operating a labour market akin to slavery and called on London to open safe routes for migrants, as the two governments continued to deflect blame for last week’s drownings in the Channel.

The criticism came hours after France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, held a crisis meeting with European ministers and border agencies to discuss the migrant emergency around the Channel ports.

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Omicron Covid variant cases expected to rise, says UK health minister – video

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The UK health minister, Edward Argar, has said he expects cases of the new Omicron Covid variant to rise after a number of infections were confirmed in Britain. New restrictions are being imposed this week in an attempt to limit the spread of the variant, first identified in South Africa, which scientists fear could be highly transmissible and evade some vaccine protections.

Argar reiterated comments that ministers were hopeful that 'swift, precautionary steps' would mean no extra measures would be needed to combat the new variant.

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Claim Prince Charles speculated on grandchildren’s skin colour ‘is fiction’

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Clarence House denies claim in new book that Charles asked about ‘complexion’ of Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s future children

The private office of the Prince of Wales has dismissed as “fiction” claims in a new book that Prince Charles was the royal who speculated on the skin colour of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s future children.

The American journalist and author Christopher Andersen, a former editor of the US celebrity news magazine People, alleges in the book that Charles made the comment on the day Harry and Meghan’s engagement was announced in November 2017.

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Britain and Israel to sign trade and defence deal

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Pact covers Iran as well as cybersecurity, despite controversy over use of Israeli firm NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware in UK

Britain and Israel will sign a 10-year trade and defence pact in London on Monday, promising cooperation on issues such as cybersecurity and a joint commitment to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

The agreement was announced by Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, and her Israeli counterpart Yair Lapid, despite evidence that spyware made by Israeli company NSO Group had probably been used to spy on two British lawyers advising the ex-wife of the ruler of Dubai, Princess Haya.

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British MPs call for law changes to help young Hongkongers flee to UK

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Figures show that 93% of those charged over protests are under 25 and many therefore not eligible to access current UK visa scheme

More than nine in 10 people who have faced protest charges in Hong Kong are too young to access a UK visa scheme dedicated to helping Hongkongers flee to Britain, according to advocates and MPs calling for new laws to assist them.

The release of the figures on Sunday by the advocacy group Hong Kong Watch comes before a parliamentary debate this week on proposed migration law amendments that would widen the pathway for people with British national (overseas) (BNO) status to resettle in the UK.

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What does appearance of Omicron variant mean for the double-vaccinated?

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We find out how much protection Covid vaccines may offer amid speculation new variant could be more resistant

The emergence of Omicron has prompted widespread speculation that it may be more resistant to Covid-19 vaccines than existing variants, including Delta. But what does that mean for the average double-vaccinated person?

All the vaccines currently available in the UK work by training the immune system against the coronavirus spike protein – the key it uses to infect cells by binding to the ACE2 receptor. Omicron possesses more than 30 mutations in this protein, including 10 in the so-called “receptor-binding domain” (RBD) – the specific part that latches on to this receptor. Delta has two RBD mutations.

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‘He’s missing’: anxious wait in Calais camps for news on Channel victims

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In northern France, friends and relatives of those who died in the tragic crossing on Wednesday are desperate for answers

On Saturday Gharib Ahmed spent five hours outside the police station in Calais, desperately waiting for news. “It was so cold. There was no answer,” he said. Ahmed was seeking confirmation that his brother-in-law Twana Mamand was one of 27 people who died in the Channel on Wednesday after the flimsy dinghy taking them to the UK sank. “I want to see his body. I have to understand,” Ahmed told the Guardian.

Relatives of the mostly Iraqi Kurds who perished in the world’s busiest shipping lane spent the weekend in a state of anxiety and confusion. Ahmed said he last heard from his brother-in-law at 3am on Wednesday, around the time Twana set off in darkness from a beach near Dunkirk. After two days of silence, Ahmed travelled with his wife, Kale Mamand – Twana’s sister – from their home in London to northern France, arriving on Friday night.

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How bad will the Omicron Covid variant be in Britain? Three things will tell us | Devi Sridhar

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A new variant identified in southern Africa is causing global panic – but its real impact will be shown by the data scientists are racing to establish

Omicron, the name of the new Covid-19 variant that is sending worrying signals from southern Africa, sounds like something from Transformers. It has caused panic across the world, among governments, the public and the stock markets. After adding a number of southern African countries to the red list, the UK government has reimposed mandatory masks in England from Tuesday, and will require anyone travelling to the country from abroad to take a PCR test. Omicron is probably the first variant to have scientists worried since Delta became the predominant strain in every country last summer. But how bad it is? What does it mean for future lockdowns – and future deaths?

Scientists are waiting on three pieces of data before they will be able to tell what effect this new variant will have over the next six to 12 months. The first is how infectious Omicron is. Can it outcompete Delta? Earlier this year we saw another worrying variant, Beta, that luckily faded away as a result of a selective advantage in Delta that allowed it to transmit faster between people. Limited data from South Africa shows that Omicron is very infectious, but whether it will become the predominant strain remains to be seen.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

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Readers reply: which monarchs would have lived longer if modern medicine had been available?

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The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

Which British monarchs would have survived their illness or wounding if today’s medical knowledge had existed then? (Bonus question: which monarchs would we have had but for illnesses that are now easily preventable?) Jane Shaw

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

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‘Shocking’ that UK is moving child refugees into hotels

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Children’s Society criticises practice of placing unaccompanied minors in hotels with limited care

Record numbers of unaccompanied child asylum seekers who arrived in the UK on small boats are being accommodated in four hotels along England’s south coast, a situation that the Children’s Society has described as “shocking”.

About 250 unaccompanied children who arrived in small boats are thought to be accommodated in hotels, which Ofsted said was an unacceptable practice.

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Covid live news: WHO Africa head urges world to keep borders open; third Omicron case found in UK

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UN agency’s comments follow South Africa’s call to reverse flight bans; G7 health ministers to hold urgent meeting on Omicron variant; large contact tracing operation in Westminster

China could face more than 630,000 Covid-19 infections a day if it dropped its zero-tolerance policies by lifting travel curbs, according to a study by Peking University mathematicians, Reuters reports.

In the report by the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, the mathematicians said China could not afford to lift travel restrictions without more efficient vaccinations or specific treatments.

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Channel crossings: who would make such a dangerous journey – and why?

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Most of the people who reach the UK after risking their lives in small boats have their claims for asylum approved

Last week’s tragedy in the Channel has reopened the debate on how to stop people making dangerous crossings, with the solutions presented by the government focused on how to police the waters.

Less has been said about where those people come from, with most fleeing conflicts and persecution. About two-thirds of people arriving on small boats between January 2020 and May 2021 were from Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria. Many also came from Eritrea, from where 80% of asylum applications were approved.

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Lucian Freud painting denied by artist is authenticated by experts

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The artist insisted he did not paint Standing Male Nude, but three specialists have concluded it is his work

Almost 25 years ago, a Swiss art collector bought a Lucian Freud painting – a full-length male nude – at auction. He then received a call from the British artist, asking to buy it from him. The two men did not know each other, and the collector politely refused, as he liked the picture.

Three days later, he claims he received another call from a now furious Freud who told him that, unless he sold it to him, he would deny having painted it.

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Bee aware: do you know what is in that cheap jar of honey?

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British beekeepers call for stricter labelling on supermarket blends to identify the countries of origin

British beekeepers are calling for a requirement on supermarkets and other retailers to label cheap honey imports from China and other nations with the country of origin after claims that part of the global supply is bulked out with sugar syrup.

The UK is the world’s biggest importer of Chinese honey, which can be one sixth of the price of the honey produced by bees in Britain. Supermarket own-label honey from China can be bought for as little as 69p a jar. Supermarkets say every jar of honey is “100% pure” and can be traced back to the beekeeper, but there is no requirement to identify the countries of origin of honey blended from more than one country. The European Union is now considering new rules to improve consumer information for honey and ensure the country of origin is clearly identified on the jar.

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Inside Dunkirk’s desperate refugee camps: ‘They take risks because they feel they have no choice’

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Among the makeshift tents near the French beaches, we ask what drives people to make the perilous journey in small boats and what could prevent more deaths

There was a time when, if you googled the phrase “Dunkirk, small boats”, reports of one of Britain’s finest hours would stack up in the results. Not last week. The beaches near Dunkirk have now become synonymous not with the embarkation point of dramatic rescue but of despairing tragedy.

Details of the 27 people, among them seven women and three children, who drowned in the Channel on Wednesday have been very slow to emerge, their anonymity itself an indication of their desperation. The first to be named was a Kurdish woman from northern Iraq, Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin, a newly engaged student, who was WhatsApp messaging her fiance, who lives in the UK, when the group’s dinghy started deflating. The 24-year-old had travelled through Germany and France to join Mohammed Karzan in the UK, paying people smugglers thousands of euros to get across the Channel in the absence of other possible routes. Karzan said that he had been in continuous contact with his fiancee and was tracking her GPS coordinates. “After four hours and 18 minutes from the moment she went into that boat,” he said, “then I lost her.”

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Asylum in the UK: the key numbers

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So often in debates about asylum, statistics are used out of context to back up a politically motivated point, or as fuel in the government’s culture war against asylum seekers. Here are the key statistics about the UK’s asylum system in context

13,210. The number of people the UK granted protection to via asylum or resettlement routes in the year to September 2021 This is significantly lower than before the pandemic hit in March 2020.

64%. The proportion of initial asylum applications that were successful in the year ending September 2021. This rate has increased in recent years. In addition, almost half of unsuccessful applications are granted on appeal.

17th. The UK’s ranking against EU countries in terms of the number of asylum applications it gets, adjusted for population. The UK’s asylum application per capita rate is almost half the EU average. Germany received 122,015 asylum applications in the year ending March 2021; France, 93,475.

37,562. The number of asylum applications in the UK in the year ending September 2021. This is 18% higher than last year, which saw a dip as a result of the pandemic, and less than half the peak of 84,312 that was seen in the early 2000s.

25,700. The number of people who have arrived in the UK so far this year after making the dangerous Channel crossing in small boats. This is three times the total number who arrived via this route in 2020.

83,733. The number of people awaiting an initial decision on their asylum application at the end of September 2021. Delays in the asylum system have increased rapidly since 2018: this is 41% higher than a year ago.

86%. The proportion of refugees worldwide who live in low-income countries neighbouring their country of origin. A very small proportion choose to travel to Europe. The UK is home to just 1% of the 26.4 million refugees who have been forcibly displaced from their home country across the world. Around half of the world’s refugees are under the age of 18.

£39.63. The amount that people seeking asylum get per week to subsist on in the UK. In France, it’s £42.84, and in Germany £65.63. In Germany, they are allowed to work 3 months from making their applications, in France it’s 6 months. In the UK they’re not allowed to work at all regardless of how long it takes for their application to be processed.

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