Research reveals fully vaccinated people are just as likely to pass virus on to those they share a home with
People who are fully vaccinated against Covid yet catch the virus are just as infectious to others in their household as infected unvaccinated people, research suggests.
Households are a key setting for the transmission of Covid infections (pdf), with frequent prolonged daily contact with an infected person linked to an increased risk of catching the virus.
Continue reading...Chief scientific adviser to UK government says high level of cases ‘remains a concern’; Russia records over 40,000 new cases and record 1,159 Covid deaths
Stephen Reicher is a member of the Sage subcommittee in the UK advising on behavioural science, and he writes for us this morning saying that Covid measures give us choice – they are not restrictions on British life:
Regarding ventilation, I would institute a system whereby all public spaces were required to indicate their “clean air” status, just as kitchens in restaurants are required to indicate their hygiene status. I would also improve the messaging so that people know how important it is and how to know when they are safe. This wouldn’t amount to a restriction. It’s a protection. It doesn’t limit choice. On the contrary, in increasing the number of spaces that are safe, it gives us more choice.
Continue reading...Airline, which even barred some people who sought redress, commits to refunds within five working days
Ryanair has promised to start refunding customers for cancelled flights within five working days, after criticism of its reimbursements policy during the pandemic.
The Dublin-based carrier, which has previously described itself as a “no-refunds airline”, has also announced significant improvements to the way it treats customers whose flights are delayed or cancelled.
Continue reading...Cases may level off soon, but bets are off until after half-term – and NHS faces winter crisis regardless
The Covid pandemic has been a story of twists and turns, with the situation often developing quickly.
For much of October, confirmed cases in the UK have risen daily – largely driven by increases in England and Wales.
Continue reading...After three decades on the stage and screen, the star is still worrying about where his next job will come from. Meanwhile, at home, he frets about letting down his family
Mark Strong has a good face for villainy – spare and inscrutable, with thin lips and “eyes like tunnels”, as Arthur Miller might have put it. On camera, he gives a sort of fractional disclosure, expressions altering in tiny increments, so that watching him perform is often an exercise in judging how much good can reasonably be seen in the bad. He specialises in antiheroes and authority figures, from gangsters (Kick-Ass, The Long Firm) to heads of intelligence (The Imitation Game, Body of Lies, Zero Dark Thirty). His latest incarnation – as a surgeon who operates in the criminal underground in the TV drama Temple, now in its second series – melds these roles as he crosses and recrosses the line between conscientious and cruel.
Although highly regarded for his work across stage, film and TV, Strong is not a big winner of awards (though he earned an Olivier for his outstanding portrayal of Eddie Carbone in Miller’s A View from the Bridge in 2015). He comes across as somehow outside the system. He is reputable rather than starry, plays parts rather than leads and has retained the air of a jobbing actor. Surely at 58, after 30 years of nearly constant work and more than 100 screen credits, with a voice so sonorous and distinctive it draws you to the depths, he deserves a bigger breakthrough. Is he frustrated by the lack of leading parts?
Continue reading...David Henderson found guilty at Cardiff crown court of endangering safety of an aircraft
David Henderson, the businessman who organised the flight that crashed, killing the footballer Emiliano Sala, has been found guilty of endangering the safety of an aircraft.
The 67-year-old was convicted by a majority verdict of 10 to two by a jury at Cardiff crown court on Thursday.
Continue reading...Comments from French EU affairs minister come as British trawler is detained in France amid dispute
France will “now use the language of force” in an escalation of a row over post-Brexit fishing rights, France’s EU affairs minister has said, as French maritime police seized a British trawler found in its territorial waters without a licence.
One vessel was stopped off Le Havre in the early hours of Thursday morning, then rerouted to the quay and “handed over to the judicial authority”, while a second was given a verbal warning.
Continue reading...Teenager was convicted in July of murdering Nicole Smallman, 27, and Bibaa Henry, 46, in June 2020
A teenager who murdered two sisters in a London park has been given two concurrent 35-year jail sentences at the Old Bailey.
Danyal Hussein, 19, killed Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman in a random attack which he believed would act as a “sacrifice” to a demon named “the mighty king Lucifuge Rofocale” to enable him to win the lottery.
Handing out the 35-year minimum term on Thursday, Mrs Justice Whipple told Hussein: “You committed these vicious attacks. You did it to kill. You did it for money and a misguided pursuit of power.
Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy and Matt Smith star in a horror-thriller that takes a trip to the sleazy heart of London’s past
A trip to the dark heart of London’s unswinging 60s is what’s on offer in this entertaining, if uneven, film from screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns and director Edgar Wright, serving up a gorgeous soundtrack and some marvellous re-creations of sleazy Soho and the West End. There’s a tremendous image of the marquee for the 1965 Thunderball premiere in Coventry Street, and a show-stopping crane shot of Soho Square, apparently filmed from where the 20th Century Fox sign is now no longer to be found atop that company’s former premises.
Last Night in Soho is a doppelganger horror-thriller about a wide-eyed fashion student called Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) who has brought her mum’s old Dansette record player and Cilla Black and Petula Clark LPs up to London from Cornwall on the train. Eloise has a fetish for the lost innocent glamour of the 60s but, moping all alone in her manky bedsit, finds herself stricken with neon phantasms. Like a ghost from the future, Eloise dreams her way through a portal in time back into 60s London clubland, where she witnesses Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), a blonde singer – exactly the kind of retro showbiz princess Eloise moonily idolises – who is being forced by her slick-haired manager Jack (Matt Smith) into having sex for money with creepy old men. Gradually, Eloise feels her identity merging with Sandie’s. Is she having a breakdown, or is this nightmare really happening?
Continue reading...Tax havens cost governments at least $245bn a year in lost revenue – and many of these havens are British. In fact, the country is leading the world in hiding legitimate money and laundering dirty cash. So how did we get here, and how has Britain managed to preside over a third of the world's lost taxes?
Continue reading...Industrial action abandoned as trade union leaders confirmed pay talks with ScotRail have been settled
Rail strikes planned for next week’s Cop26 climate conference have been abandoned after trade union leaders confirmed negotiations on a pay rise have been settled.
The announcement was made after talks between the RMT union and transport bosses on Wednesday.
Continue reading...No 10 threatens retaliation against French measures including port ban on British fishing boats
A major trade dispute has broken out between the UK and France after Paris banned British fishing boats from key ports, vowed to impose onerous checks on cross-Channel trade, and threatened the UK’s energy supply over a row over post-Brexit rights to UK waters.
The move prompted a dramatic response from Downing Street where a spokesperson for Boris Johnson said the UK government would retaliate over what was a described as a potential breach of international law.
Continue reading...Analysis: chancellor left with little choice but to go PM’s way, though one passage of his speech was telling
Rishi Sunak may see himself as a future prime minister but this budget confirmed he is very much Boris Johnson’s chancellor.
Rumours about ructions between the pair have gripped Westminster for months. Sunak, who told last year’s Tory conference his party had a moral duty to fix the public finances, was known to be queasy about the government’s national insurance increase, for example.
Continue reading...Xavier Bettel admits dissertation ‘should have been done differently’ after investigation uncovers plagiarism
Luxembourg’s prime minister, Xavier Bettel, has admitted his university thesis “should have been done differently” after a media investigation concluded that only two of the work’s 56 pages had not been plagiarised.
A local news outlet, reporter.lu, said on Wednesday that Bettel had lifted three-quarters of the text, describing it as “an impressive hodgepodge of copied passages that does not meet the customary requirements of academia”.
Continue reading...‘Medicane’ storm with winds of 100km/h expected in Sicily, where two have died in flooding
Southern Italy was braced on Wednesday for the arrival of what forecasters have described as a Medicane – a rare Mediterranean hurricane bringing winds of more than 100kmh and producing 5-metre waves.
Fierce storms have battered Sicily for days, leaving roads submerged in the eastern part of the island and claiming the lives of at least two people. Video footage shows flood waters engulfing the city of Palermo, turning streets into rivers and squares into lakes.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak will be looking at key indicators such as GDP growth, public debt levels and inflation as he draws up his autumn budget
Britain’s economic recovery from Covid is at growing risk from severe shortages of workers and materials, as well as mounting living costs for households, as Rishi Sunak prepares his budget and spending review.
Here are five key charts that will underpin the chancellor’s statement on Wednesday afternoon.
Continue reading...Attorney says the deal can protect the prince against a lawsuit that claims that he assaulted Virginia Giuffre when she was 17
Prince Andrew’s lawyer has asked a New York judge to keep sealed a 2009 legal agreement that he says can protect the prince against a lawsuit’s claims that he sexually assaulted an American woman when she was under 18.
The request was made in court papers in Manhattan federal court, where the US district judge Lewis A Kaplan is presiding over an August lawsuit filed on behalf of Virginia Giuffre. The lawsuit said the prince abused her on multiple occasions in 2001 when she was 17 and a minor under US law.
Continue reading...Chancellor to strike upbeat tone despite cost-of-living crisis, with spending pledges worth billions
Rishi Sunak will use his budget to insist the UK is entering an economic “age of optimism” despite a looming cost-of-living crisis, after making a deluge of promises to spend billions more on health, transport and skills.
In an attempt to strike an upbeat tone during his second budget on Wednesday, the chancellor will say his aim is to create a “new economy post-Covid”.
Continue reading...Analysis: early uncertainty around vaccination advice for expectant mothers has left them confused and hesitant
In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, there was uncertainty around almost everything, from who was more adversely affected by Covid-19 to who should get vaccinated first – or at all.
But as awareness about the illness and vaccine safety has grown, one group in particular remains confused and torn about the risk of immunisation: expectant mothers.
Continue reading...Chief scientific adviser for Department of Health refers to tougher proposal beyond ‘plan B’ that has ‘not been extensively worked up’
A “plan C” for tougher coronavirus restrictions has been discussed in official circles, a senior civil servant has confirmed, despite ministers denying that tougher measures are an option this Christmas should the rate of new cases continue to rise.
The indication of planning for potentially harsher restrictions comes as senior scientists and Labour push for the rollout of “plan B”, an existing package of “light-touch” measures including advice to work from home and compulsory face masks in some settings.
Continue reading...