Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
An increasing number of European governments are planning to prevent unvaccinated people from being able to attend hospitality venues such as bars and restaurants this summer, as Emmanuel Macron celebrates the fruits of the recent announcement of the policy in France.
France on Monday passed the threshold of 40 million people having received at least one vaccine dose – close to 60% of the population. Macron tweeted: “Together we will defeat the virus. We continue!”
He has dressed Beyoncé and Lady Gaga – and now he’s dressed Birmingham. As his ‘infinity pattern’ is unveiled, the artist talks poverty, class – and why he’s not interested in being a ‘good immigrant’
Approaching Birmingham New Street station on the train, you’ll normally spot the scaly curves of Selfridges’ landmark Future Systems-designed building nestling in the cityscape. But right now, rising into the summer sky in its place, is a bright pink and black structure. Startling, cheering and entirely unmissable, Infinity Pattern 1 is a giant installation by the multidisciplinary artist Osman Yousefzada. He was formerly best known as a fashion designer, whose beautifully tailored and elegantly architectural pieces have been worn by Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift. Now the 44-year-old has tailored a distinctive look for the Selfridges store, said to be the height of three jumbo jets, surrounding the building during a year of restoration.
Infinity Pattern 1 is Yousefzada’s first piece of public art, selected by Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery from an international shortlist. “You can read it clearly from a long way away and that was something we considered when we were selecting,” says Jonathan Watkins, Ikon’s director. “We wanted it to ring out from afar. The fact that Osman comes from Birmingham, but is so cosmopolitan and such a Renaissance man, it’s wonderful that he was the one who won.”
£4.5m monument at national memorial arboretum in Staffordshire will be unveiled on Wednesday
If PC Fiona Bone had turned a different way, if she had been sick that day, if her degree in film production studies had led to more work, her father, Paul, would have not spent the last nine years grieving.
For officers and their families, the difference between life and death in policing can be terribly slight.
More than 450 key workers with long Covid have told a cross-party parliamentary inquiry of their experiences of the condition, including struggles to return to work and lack of financial support, with one in 10 having lost their job.
Nurses, teachers, GPs, police officers and midwives were among those who shared their experience of long Covid, symptoms of which include debilitating fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pains, sleeping difficulties and brain fog.
Virtual contact during the pandemic made many over-60s feel lonelier and more depressed than no contact at all, new research has found.
Many older people stayed in touch with family and friends during lockdown using the phone, video calls, and other forms of virtual contact. Zoom choirs, online book clubs and virtual bedtime stories with grandchildren helped many stave off isolation.
Environment Agency issues five flood warnings across southern England and 19 flood alerts including parts of Wales
Torrential rain has flooded roads and tube stations in London after thunderstorms hit the south of England on Sunday.
Barts Health NHS trust declared a major incident after the flooding led to problems at Whipps Cross hospital and Newham Hospital in the east of the city.
That’s it from the blog today. Thank you for your time.
Italy reported seven coronavirus-related deaths on Sunday compared with five the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections fell to 4,743 from 5,140 on Saturday. Italy has registered 127,949 deaths linked to Covid-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the eighth-highest in the world. The country has reported more than 4.3 million cases to date.
Viewers complain after rights-holder Discovery puts majority of events behind paywall
The BBC has faced a series of complaints about the lack of live Tokyo Olympics coverage on its channels, after viewers failed to realise the International Olympic Committee has sold the majority of UK television rights to pay-TV company Discovery.
During the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympics the BBC was able to offer dozens of free livestreams of different sports, revolutionising how British viewers watched the games and providing much-needed publicity to niche events that would not normally have enjoyed their moment in the public eye.
More than 250 people in the UK and Ireland have been convicted of child sexual abuse offences committed while they were Scout leaders or in other positions of responsibility within the Scout movement, according to analysis that raises questions about the organisation’s safeguarding procedures.
For decades, the Scout movement has been promoted as offering the chance to experience adventures and gain life skills but a review of offenders shows that for scores of children it has led to abuse at the hands of someone entrusted with their welfare.
‘We have had people under 30 in intensive care,’ says Prof Adam Finn of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation
Young people are getting “seriously ill” from Covid-19, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has warned, as he urged them to get vaccinated.
Prof Adam Finn, from the University of Bristol, said there have been close to 200 admissions, with a mean age of 40, in the city during the Delta variant wave. England’s remaining Covid restrictions were eased on Monday and pictures of crowded nightclubs, filled with revellers not wearing masks or social distancing, have raised fears among some experts that infections could surge among unvaccinated young people.
Experts warn of danger of untraceable funds if companies accepting payments in cryptos go bust
The government could face “limitless” losses as a result of businesses that accept payments in untaxed and untraceable cryptocurrencies going bust, an insolvency expert has warned.
A growing number of companies, including the ethical cosmetics firm Lush and office-sharing firm WeWork, have begun taking payments for goods and services in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, alongside debt, credit or cash.
After 40 UK drownings in July, national park says TikTok and Instagram are leading visitors to isolated party spots
Drunk swimming is becoming an “increasing challenge” in the Lake District this summer, a national park spokesman has said, as visitors try to replicate boozy foreign holidays at home.
An estimated 40 people have drowned in the UK since the heatwave began on 14 July, triple the normal rate of water deaths, according to the National Water Safety Forum.
‘David Taylor’ claims hooding, sensory deprivation and waterboarding was to persuade him to cooperate with the CIA
A British citizen has claimed he was tortured in Somalia and questioned by US intelligence officers, raising concern that controversial practices of the post-9/11 “war on terror” are still being used.
The 45-year-old from London alleges he has endured hooding, sensory deprivation and waterboarding at the hands of the Somali authorities to persuade him, he believes, to cooperate with the CIA. Foreign Office officials are aware of the allegationsof torture and US involvement, but their failure to act has raised questions over UK complicity.
Health experts have warned the government that it needs to increase efforts to ensure more young adults are vaccinated against Covid-19 – as a matter of urgency.
They fear the current low take-up of jabs among 18- to 25-year-olds could lead to a pile-up of vaccine campaigns in September, when other groups are scheduled to get booster injections and also to be inoculated against influenza. In addition, they argue that vaccines also have a crucial role to play in protecting young adults against long Covid, which is now recognised as a serious problem associated with the disease.
Sajid Javid has provoked a wave of anger from families of the victims of Covid after he said people must no longer “cower” from the virus.
The health secretary announced on Saturday that he had made a “full recovery” from Covid-19 after falling ill eight days ago, and said: “Please, if you haven’t yet, get your jab, as we learn to live with, rather than cower from, this virus.”
Landmark parliamentary report features evidence of gang rape, sex for career advancement and trophies to ‘bag the woman’
Almost two-thirds of women in the armed forces have experienced bullying, sexual harassment and discrimination duringtheir career, according to a parliamentary report that says the UK military is “failing to protect” female recruits.
Heralding its inquiry into the treatment of women in the armed forces as one of the most vital in its history, the defence subcommittee said 62% of the 4,106 veterans and current female personnel who gave testimony had either witnessed or received “unacceptable behaviour”.
The artificial hill in central London seems a great idea, but it would be better to have done something that genuinely helped the environment
The Torre Guinigi in Lucca, Italy, is a brick medieval tower – it’s handsome, but of a type common enough in historic Tuscan cities. What makes it special is a grove of holm oaks growing from its summit. Trees come with expectations, such that they are rooted in the ground, yet there they are, high in the air, apparently flourishing. The tower would be less interesting if it weren’t for the trees and the trees would be less interesting if it weren’t for the tower.
So there’s something compelling about trees in unexpected places. Hence at least part of the appeal of the High Line in New York, where gardens grow on an old elevated railway line, and of the ski slope on top of the Amager Bakke power plant in Copenhagen. There’s been a thing for wrapping towers in vegetation in recent years. Little Island, the micro-park recently created by Thomas Heatherwick over the Hudson, has a similar well-I-never, Instagram-able impact.
Government cites national security in civil case over 2019 death of British teenager in road crash
The US government has requested that the country’s civil courts prevent the disclosure of the employment details of Harry Dunn’s alleged killer in the interests of “national security”.
The 19-year-old’s parents, Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn, lodged a claim against Anne Sacoolas and her husband after the teenager’s death in a road crash outside a US military base in Northamptonshire two years ago.
In the UK, discontent with the government’s self-isolation policy is growing as food industry bosses condemned changes to ease the “pingdemic” as “worse than useless”.
PA Media reports that hospitality leaders have warned of a summer of closures and train operators have been forced to cut services. The agency says:
There were increasing calls for Boris Johnson to bring forward his wider relaxation of quarantine rules for the fully vaccinated from 16 August as businesses were hampered by staff being told to isolate as coronavirus cases soar.
In a bid to calm the concerns of industry, ministers published a limited list of sectors whose double-jabbed workers are eligible to avoid isolation if they undergo daily testing before the wider easing of rules for England.
Tunisia suffered 317 deaths in the last 24 hours, its worst daily toll since the start of the pandemic, its health ministry has said.
According to Reuters, the ministry also reported 5,624 new cases, increasing concerns about the country’s ability to fight the pandemic, with intensive care units in hospitals completely full and a lack of oxygen supplies. The vaccination campaign is moving slowly. The agency reports:
The World Health Organization (WHO) says the daily death tally in Tunisia is now the highest in Africa and in the Arab world.
The total number of cases since the start of the pandemic has reached about 560,000, with more than 18,300 deaths, out of a total population of 11.6 million people.