Unsettled weather forecast across England and Wales with ‘torrential thundery downpours’ in the east
The Met Office has issued weather and flood warnings as Storm Evert moved eastwards across Britain with thunderstorms forecast for the weekend.
Yellow wind warnings are in place for coastal areas in south-east England and East Anglia, and thunderstorm warnings for a swath of England from Nottingham to Norwich and north as far as Hull.
Continue reading...Actor best known for Vera Drake takes over from Olivia Colman for fifth series about the UK royal family
The first image of Imelda Staunton in character as the Queen in season five of The Crown has been revealed.
Staunton has taken over from the Golden Globe winner Olivia Colman, as the fresh series ushers in a new era for the royal family. Netflix gave fans a first glimpse of Staunton as the monarch while she was still filming the next instalment of the Netflix show.
Continue reading...Chris Dunne on the successful school sport partnership scheme that the Conservatives dismantled in 2010 – and on why good coaching is the crucial factor at any level of sport
Barney Ronay (Gold medals are illusory, world-class public facilities should be the goal, 23 July) says “the idea of a tangible legacy [from the London 2012 Olympics] was always flimflam”, but one of the most important factors in the Games being awarded to the UK was that we had already put in place the grassroots plan to ensure the legacy years before we even made the bid.
In 2002 the Labour government had created, in England, school sport partnerships (SSPs), based in 450 secondary sports colleges, each of which was responsible for hugely increasing participation in sport in both their own school and a network of local secondaries, each releasing PE specialists for half of every week to help train primary school teachers to widen the sports offer to their pupils and to deliver quality coaching. Identifying talent at the grassroots and nurturing it through to local clubs and on to county, national and Team GB participation was another very firm objective.
Continue reading...Naval strike group is sailing through waters heavily contested between China and neighbouring countries
Britain has said it has no plans to stage a naval confrontation with China in the South China Sea and that it aims to send its carrier strike group in the most direct route across the contested body of water from Singapore to the Philippine Sea.
The cooling message emerged hours after China’s military and state media warned the UK against provocation as the group, led by Royal Navy aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, undertakes what had been expected to be a more assertive deployment.
Continue reading...Advanz Pharma and former private equity owners were fined £100m by markets watchdog
A pharmaceuticals firm that inflated thyroid drug prices by up to 6,000% over a decade paid out more than £400m to shareholders and directors during the same period.
London-based Advanz Pharma – and its former private equity owners HgCapital and Cinven – were fined a combined £100m by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on Thursday.
Continue reading...Israeli foreign minister contacts Dominic Raab and says ‘Iran is not just an Israeli problem’
Israel has blamed Iran for a suspected drone attack on a tanker in the Arabian Sea that killed two crew, including a British national, and has vowed a harsh response.
The Liberian flagged Mercer Street, which is linked to an Israeli tycoon, was hit off the coast of Oman late on Thursday in what is thought to have been a swarm attack involving multiple drones.
Continue reading...Data analysis finds large-scale cuts to youth services and increase in racial disparity 10 years on
The conditions that led to riots across England 10 years ago still exist today, experts have warned, as data analysis showed significant cuts to youth services in affected areas and an increase in racial disparity in stop and search.
On 4 August 2011, police officers shot and killed Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old mixed-race man, in Tottenham, north London. His death sparked a wave of civil unrest that started the capital and spread to other cities, causing property damage to the value of £40m a day.
Continue reading...J Lo and Ben Affleck did it, but experts urge restraint after lockdown prompts ‘rekindled romance’ dating trend
Relationship experts have warned against romanticising the idea of getting back with your ex-partner, after it was confirmed that one of the most famous celebrity couples of the early noughties – Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck – were indeed back together.
Last week, the actor and singer thrilled fans when they recreated a famous intimate image from J-Lo’s 2002 music video for Jenny from the Block to mark her 52nd birthday, 17 years after their break up.
Continue reading...Grant Shapps defends decision to put France on UK’s amber-plus list over Beta variant threat
A British cabinet minister has sought to dampen down a growing diplomatic row with France over the imposition of tougher international restrictions on millions of travellers owing to the threat of the Beta variant of coronavirus.
Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, defended the decision to put France on the “amber-plus” list, after the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, on Thursday suggested the variant’s prevalence on Réunion, a French overseas territory in the Indian Ocean, was partly to blame.
Continue reading...Analysis: we have been here before with damning reports on race and policing, and we will almost certainly be here again
• MPs rebuke police for systemic failure to improve record on race
Race issues for the police – after the Macpherson report in 1999 – were seen as a problem mainly affecting the rank and file, which was dominated by the white working class. It was clear that policing would radically change only if government pressured it to do so. Promises were made and very basic targets for the recruitment of ethnic minority officers were set. So why are we still here?
The bitter truth is because those who have the power to do something do not care enough, or lack the will, or focus, or think what the police are doing on race is enough. Critics would say those in power are hampered by institutional racism. The other possibility is that every report on this topic that raised troubling findings has been wrong.
Continue reading...Female duo who approach older men including in golf club car parks are believed to have struck 14 times
People in the south of England have been warned to be vigilant if wearing high-value watches or jewellery after a spate of thefts by women who approach older men.
Several expensive watches have been stolen in the car parks of golf clubs and most victims have been lone men in their 70s.
Continue reading...Experts warn against drawing conclusions from fluctuations as 31,117 daily infections reported
The daily number of Covid cases reported in the UK has risen for the second day in a row, although experts have cautioned against drawing premature conclusions from the fluctuations.
On Thursday, 31,117 cases were reported in the UK, up from 27,734 the day before, which marked the first rise in cases since 20 July.
Continue reading...The government’s words at the global education summit are completely at odds with its behaviour. Whatever the event achieves will be despite its UK hosts, not because of them
With all the fanfare Covid would allow, the global education summit opened in London this week. Ahead of the meeting, the minister for European neighbourhood and the Americas was on rousing form. “Educating girls is a gamechanger,” Wendy Morton said, going on to describe what a plan would look like to do just that.
The UK, co-hosting the summit with Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, plans to raise funds for the Global Partnership for Education, from governments and donors. The UK government has promised £430m over the next five years.
Continue reading...Latest updates: latest figures show increase of more than 70,000 compared to previous week
Here are the main points from the Downing Street lobby briefing.
The chancellor has said previously that the triple lock is government policy. But we recognise people’s concerns. We’ve got to ensure fairness for both taxpayers an pensioners.
Thank you @RNLI for all that you do. https://t.co/MkdOU1IHaP
Just made a donation. If you’d like to too - and help save lives - please visit https://t.co/TnJtqXeXbg pic.twitter.com/tk6a8Zky3k
These are from Torsten Bell, the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, a thinktank focusing on pay and inequality, on today’s furlough figures. (See 11.44am.)
Two big take-aways from today's furlough stats. 1. almost 2 million workers still furloughed as the scheme's phase out started. That's more than I expected and the rate of decline halved in June from May (lesson = labour market chat has become too complacent) pic.twitter.com/xZgxG1AmAp
2. Furlough is now an older workers story. The young (who were most likely to have been furloughed) are flowing off the scheme much faster. Older workers are more likely to be parked on it and as a result, for the first time, they have the highest furlough rates pic.twitter.com/Ot6ThssfJa
Continue reading...Warning of possible infrastructure damage and travel disruption, with gusts of up to 75mph in Cornwall
Winds of up to 75mph (120km/h) will lash parts of south-west England as Storm Evert hits the UK on Thursday and Friday.
The Met Office said the newly named storm would bring “unseasonably strong winds and heavy rain”.
Continue reading...Foreign secretary says government will not ‘hold country back’ because some are not getting vaccinated
The government is using the threat of domestic vaccine passports to coax and cajole people into getting fully vaccinated, the foreign secretary has admitted.
Dominic Raab said ministers did not want to “hold the country back” just because some individuals were not coming forward to get inoculated, confirming publicly what many suspected about Boris Johnson’s sudden decision to throw his weight behind certification for nightclubs.
Continue reading...Former No 10 adviser pressed for appointment to be hurried through, saying he had ‘ordered it’ from PM
Dominic Cummings personally called a former colleague on the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and asked if his company would work for the government on its response to the Covid pandemic, leading to the award of a £580,000 Cabinet Office contract with no competitive process.
In an email on 20 March 2020, Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser asked the most senior civil servant responsible for contracts to sign off the budget immediately, and that if “anybody in CABOFF [the Cabinet Office] whines”, to tell them Cummings had “ordered it” from the prime minister.
Continue reading...Study citing ‘perilous state’ of industrial civilisation ranks temperate islands top for resilience
New Zealand, Iceland, the UK, Tasmania and Ireland are the places best suited to survive a global collapse of society, according to a study.
The researchers said human civilisation was “in a perilous state” due to the highly interconnected and energy-intensive society that had developed and the environmental damage this had caused.
Continue reading...We examine the new regulations regarding quarantine, testing and proving inoculation after 2 August
Millions of people living outside the UK will be allowed quarantine-free entry following the most significant lifting of restrictions on international travel in months. Here’s what you need to know:
Continue reading...UK scientist says gene-drive study rendering female insects infertile may lead to ‘self destruct mosquito’ field tests within 10 years
Scientists have successfully wiped out a population of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes by using a radical form of genetic engineering to render the females infertile – in the most advanced and largest ever test of use of the technology to fight the disease.
As well as bringing fresh hope in the fight against one of the world’s biggest killers, the study lays the foundations for further trials of gene-drive technology, which could mean self-destroying mosquitoes being released into the wild within 10 years.
Continue reading...