Complaints emerge of ‘chaotic’ system as local councils try to find suitable homes for refugees
The Home Office will not say how many of the airlifted Afghans qualify to be rehoused in the UK and has refused to reveal how many families have already moved out of hotels and into homes.
By calling around local authorities and devolved administrations, however, the Guardian has started to build a fractured picture of which areas have stepped up to do their bit.
Continue reading...Discovery of nobleman Khuwy shows that Egyptians were using advanced embalming methods 1,000 years before assumed date
The ancient Egyptians were carrying out sophisticated mummifications of their dead 1,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to new evidence which could lead to a rewriting of the history books.
The preserved body of a high-ranking nobleman called Khuwy, discovered in 2019, has been found to be far older than assumed and is, in fact, one of the oldest Egyptian mummies ever discovered. It has been dated to the Old Kingdom, proving that mummification techniques some 4,000 years ago were highly advanced.
Continue reading...Housing secretary’s intervention follows speculation that the building would be demolished because of structural fears
Michael Gove has signalled he will explore “retention” options to preserve Grenfell Tower as a memorial to the 72 people killed in the 2017 fire, a move that has been welcomed by relatives of the dead.
The new housing secretary’s intervention, weeks into his latest post, follows speculation that Grenfell would be demolished because of safety concerns. It is understood his predecessor, Robert Jenrick, had been briefed that the tower posed a risk to the local west London community with government-appointed structural engineers indicating it should be razed.
Continue reading...Councils consulted over support for measures such as vaccine passports amid warnings by senior doctors that NHS faces winter illness ‘triple whammy’
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New evidence has emerged that the government is paving the way to implement “plan B” measures in England to combat the spread of Covid-19, amid warnings from health chiefs that a “vortex of pressures” is encircling the NHS.
In the clearest sign to date that Whitehall is actively considering additional measures, the Observer has learnt that the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) contacted local authorities on Friday to canvass their level of support for the “immediate rollout of the winter plan – plan B”.
Continue reading...Government sources say talks with EU ‘constructive’ but ‘we are still far apart on big issues’
The UK government has described talks with the EU over the Northern Ireland Brexit protocol as “constructive” but insisted it was not about to cave in on its demands that the role of the European court of justice be scrapped.
Government sources dampened hopes of a breakthrough, saying the two sides were still “far apart on the big issues”.
Continue reading...Rescue centres say they are seeing more and more pets their owners are now too busy to look after
People are pretending that dogs they acquired during lockdown are strays so that rescue centres take them in, after failing to sell them online, animal rescue charities and shelters have warned.
Figures from March revealed that more than 3.2m pets were bought by UK households during lockdown. Since Covid restrictions were lifted and people have started to return to the office, charities have reported a growing trend of people abandoning their pandemic pets as they no longer have as much time for them.
Continue reading...Customer-facing workers in all sectors report greater hostility, research shows
People in public-facing jobs are facing rising hostility and verbal abuse since the end of the Covid lockdowns, according to organisations which represent them. Half of all shop, transport, restaurant and hotel workers and others dealing regularly with the public have experienced abuse in the past six months, figures from the Institute for Customer Service (ICS) show. This is a 6% rise over May’s 44%. Of those who had been abused, 27% had been physically attacked, it found.
The research comes as trades unions and industry bodies warn of growing public hostility towards workers since Covid’s second wave.
Continue reading...Set of six copies of portraits first produced in 1579 in Venice are going up for auction in London next week
They were powerful rulers of perhaps the mightiest empire the world has ever seen, and their portraits oiled the wheels of diplomacy. Six sultans of the Ottoman empire, which spanned more than six centuries and dominated a great swathe of the world, gaze out beneath magnificent, bulbous turbans, a symbol of their wealth and status.
An original set of 14 portraits was produced in Venice in 1579, and copies were made later. The only surviving intact set is in Munich, but a set of six goes on display at Christie’s in London this weekend before being sold at auction on 28 October.
Continue reading...Senior scientists say problems at Immensa site show private firms should not be carrying out PCR tests
Health officials should have known about major failings at a private Covid testing lab within days of the problem arising, rather than taking weeks to shut down operations at the site, senior scientists say.
About 43,000 people, mostly in south-west England, are believed to have wrongly been told they did not have the virus by Immensa Health Clinic’s laboratory in Wolverhampton in a debacle described as one of the worst scandals in the UK’s Covid crisis.
Continue reading...Summit president says 2015 global emissions agreement a ‘framework’ but rules were left for future talks
Achieving a global climate deal in Glasgow in the next three weeks will be harder than signing the Paris agreement of 2015, the UK president-designate of the Cop26 talks has said.
Alok Sharma, the cabinet minister in charge of the UK-hosted talks, just over a week away, said the task would be to get nearly 200 countries to implement stringent cuts to their greenhouse gas emissions, in line with holding global temperature increases to within 1.5C of pre-industrial levels – a goal fast receding as global carbon output continues to climb.
Continue reading...Exclusive: crown estates accused of greed in selling rights to ‘incompatible’ carbon capture and windfarm projects
A clash between two multibillion pound “net zero carbon” schemes is brewing in the North Sea after the Queen’s property manager granted development rights for one patch of seabed to two different projects at the same time.
The crown estate will earn millions of pounds after agreeing to lease an area off the Yorkshire coast to the latest phase of the giant Hornsea offshore windfarm, as well as to a scheme led by BP which plans to begin storing carbon dioxide under the seabed. This has prompted concern that the giant wind turbines could interfere with seabed sensors for the carbon storage project.
Continue reading...Funding will be used to help ‘level up’ regions including Greater Manchester and West Midlands
Almost £7bn will be allocated in next week’s budget to “level up” urban transport in cities around England, the government has said.
City regions will receive a total of about £5.7bn in sustainable transport cash, while another £1.2bn will go towards improving bus services.
Continue reading...Despite government narrative of a return to normality, schools in areas with high Covid rates lack support
Schools in England hit by high numbers of Covid-19 cases among staff and pupils have been forced to reinstate mask wearing, send whole year groups home to study online and in some cases close early for half-term as the pandemic continues to wreak havoc in education.
Despite the government narrative of a return to normality in classrooms, schools in areas with high coronavirus rates say they have struggled to function, with many staff off sick and problems securing supply teachers because of high demand.
Continue reading...Action urged over reports of retaliation against Italian nursing staff; longer than usual gap between AstraZeneca doses slowing India’s roll-out
One thing regular readers will have noted is that I occasionally pop in this map that seems to indicate the extent to which the UK’s caseload is an outlier in the western end of Europe, while also showing the surge that is building up towards the east of the continent.
It can sometimes be quite the cognitive dissonance for a journalist to be reporting that Russia – with a much larger population and a much lower caseload than the UK – is going into a week of work-free lockdown to try and break transmission, while members of the UK government are failing to follow their own public health advice over face mask wearing, even as daily Covid cases top 50,000.
“The UK is an outlier, because it does have quite high coverage of vaccination — and is still having 45,000 cases per day,” said Quique Bassat, a pediatrician at the Barcelona Institute for Global health.
Yet after Britain marked “freedom day” in July, it was to be expected that there would be a “persistence of transmission as opposed to other countries which have maintained much more stringent preventive measures,” said Bassat.
Continue reading...Far from suffering ‘Zoom fatigue’, many women have found the move to online meetings empowering
Before the pandemic Francesca used to miss a lot of meetings because she had to drop off her kids at school before commuting into the office. If she did make them, she rarely spoke up.
While many workers are suffering from Zoom fatigue, for workers like Francesca online meetings have presented an opportunity – and one that she fears may soon be taken away.
Continue reading...Young’s Seafood joins calls for sustainable quotas of mackerel, herring and blue whiting to be agreed in line with scientific advice
The UK’s largest seafood processor is threatening to stop sourcing fish from the north-east Atlantic unless coastal states, including the UK and countries in the EU, reach a suitable agreement on managing populations this month.
Young’s Seafood has joined Tesco, Co-op, Princes, Aldi, Asda, Waitrose, Marks & Spencer and other retailers and suppliers in calling for urgent action from ministers to manage populations of mackerel, herring and blue whiting more sustainably.
Continue reading...Buckingham Palace says Elizabeth II is now back in Windsor after doctors advised a few days’ rest
The Queen spent Wednesday night in hospital after cancelling a visit to Northern Ireland, Buckingham Palace has said.
The 95-year-old had been due to take part in a two-day trip, but doctors told her that she should rest for a couple of days at Windsor Castle.
Continue reading...John Ystumllyn was abducted from west Africa in 1746 and taken to Gwynedd, north Wales
One of Britain’s first known black gardeners has been honoured with a rose named after him in celebration of his life.
John Ystumllyn, whose original name is unknown, was abducted as an eight-year-old boy in west Africa around 1746 and taken to Gwynedd, north Wales. There he became a servant in the household of the Wynn family of Ystumllyn, whose estate he was named after, and learned horticulture in the gardens.
Continue reading...Family doctors reject plan to force them to see any patient who wants face-to-face appointment
GPs in England are threatening to take industrial action in protest at the government’s bid to force them to see any patient who wants a face-to-face appointment.
The British Medical Association’s GPs committee voted unanimously to reject the plan by the health secretary, Sajid Javid, that included “naming and shaming” surgeries that see too few patients in person.
Continue reading...Several European nations have questioned British response but there are growing signs of fresh wave across continent
For the past several weeks, many western European countries have been eyeing Covid case numbers across the Channel with mounting trepidation.
“Why does Britain have more than 40,000 Covid cases a day, and why is it the European country with the most infections?” asked Spain’s ABC, while France’s L’Express criticised “disastrous myopia” in London.
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