Category Archives: UK news

UK Covid dashboard showing ‘zero deaths’ but also flashing warning signals

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Analysis: vaccine programme could sever link between infections and deaths but there are reasons to be seriously doubtful

For those who are urging the government to push ahead with easing of lockdown restrictions later this month, Tuesday’s announcement of ‘zero deaths’ in the UK will be cited as further proof of the necessity to end the delay.

Certainly, the country has come a long way since the new year Covid surge, when the daily number of infections reached a peak of more than 68,000, and the number of people in hospital would later rise to almost 40,000. Daily death tolls of more than 1,000 were common during the bleakest weeks of winter.

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‘Michelangelo of Middlesbrough’ hailed for 27,000-hour model project

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Lockdown hobbyist painted 1m tiny cobbles for scale model of Yorkshire town’s demolished St Hilda’s district

Lockdown has inspired many of us to take up new hobbies, but for one Middlesbrough man, the pandemic just meant more time to devote to a mammoth project already nine years in the making.

“It was business as usual,” says Steve Waller, 61, a model artist and historian known affectionately as the “Michelangelo of Middlesbrough” who has spent almost a decade recreating the town’s historical St Hilda’s district in his bedroom.

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How the ‘good war’ went bad: elite soldiers from Australia, UK and US face a reckoning

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As coalition troops prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan after 20 years, former soldiers, key officers and the public are asking what went wrong with some special forces

“Whatever we do … ,” one Australian special forces soldier said of his service in Afghanistan, “I can tell you the Brits and the US are far, far worse.

“I’ve watched our young guys stand by and hero worship what they were doing, salivating at how the US were torturing people. You just stand there and roll your eyes and wait for it to end.”

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UK and France to blame for chaos in Libya, says presidential hopeful

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Former interior minister Fathi Bashagha claims ‘lazy’ UK failing in moral responsibility after 2011 Europe-led regime change

The UK has been distracted by Brexit and “lazy” in fulfilling its moral responsibility to pull Libya out of the chaos that enveloped it after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, a leading presidential candidate claimed.

The candidate, Fathi Bashagha, a former interior minister, who narrowly failed to become prime minister of an interim Libyan government in a UN process in February, said the UK had a special duty to come to Libya’s aid given David Cameron’s role in the country’s 2011 regime change.

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Zero daily Covid deaths announced in UK

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Britain records no new deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test for first time since July 2020

The UK has announced no deaths from Covid-19 for the first time since July last year.

Official figures showed all four nations of the country recorded no new deaths on Tuesday within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test and 3,165 new cases of the virus. It means the official UK total number of deaths remains at 127,782, the first time the daily total has not risen since 30 July 2020.

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Human challenge: the people volunteering to be infected with Covid

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Amid claims PM wanted to be infected with Covid on TV, volunteers tell of taking part in a human challenge trial

If Dominic Cummings is to be believed, Boris Johnson was so sceptical that Covid-19 was a threat early last year that he was willing to inject himself with the virus that causes the disease on television. But there are actual volunteers – young and healthy people – who elected to be infected with the virus, all in the name of science.

These volunteers lined up to participate in “human challenge trials”, which have long been successfully employed to develop vaccines for diseases from typhoid to cholera.

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UK ranked last in Europe for bathing water quality in 2020

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European Environment Agency judges only 110 British coastal and inland sites to be excellent

Swimmers in the UK hoping to enjoy waters certified clean and healthy this summer have been let down again. Only 110 coastal and inland sites were judged excellent in the latest bathing water quality data from Europe’s environmental watchdog.

Most of the UK’s bathing sites were not classified in 2020, however, because Covid-19 restrictions prevented sampling. This meant that out of 640 sites, 457 received no verdict in the rankings, compiled annually by the European Environment Agency and published on Tuesday.

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Biden corporate tax plan could earn EU and UK billions, study shows

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EU forecast to reap extra €50bn per year with UK expected to gain €200m from BP alone

A proposal to be tabled by the US president, Joe Biden, at the upcoming G7 meeting for a 15% global corporate tax rate could reap the EU €50bn (£43bn) a year, and earn the UK nearly €200m extra alone from the British multinational BP, according to research.

Should the tax rate be set higher at 25%, the lowest current rate within the seven largest world economies, the EU would earn nearly €170bn extra a year – more than 50% of current corporate tax revenue and 12% of total health spending in the bloc.

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Covid-19 variants to be given Greek alphabet names to avoid stigma

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WHO unveils new names for variants of concern to replace ones linked to where they were discovered

Coronavirus variants are to be named after letters of the Greek alphabet instead of their place of first discovery, the World Health Organization has announced, in a move to avoid stigma.

The WHO has named four variants of concern, known to the public as the UK/Kent (B.1.1.7), South Africa (B.1.351), Brazil (P.1) and India (B.1.617.2) variants. They will now be given the letters Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta respectively, to reflect their order of detection, with any new variants following the pattern down the Greek alphabet.

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Mare of Easttown finale review – Kate Winslet drama is a stunning, harrowing success

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The actor’s turn as a complex, fallible detective has been a privilege to witness, in a murder mystery that kept us guessing right to the profoundly moving end

In interviews, Kate Winslet always said it wasn’t a thriller. And she was right. Yes, Mare of Easttown (Sky Atlantic) began with a murder in a small, bleak Pennsylvania town and Winslet’s police detective Mare Sheehan being called upon to investigate. But it was almost immediately clear that the seven-part drama was setting up to be so much more – and even clearer soon after that it was likely to succeed in all its endeavours.

It was a character study, of how a woman ground down by life after the loss of a son to drugs and suicide, the consequent divorce from her husband and raising of her grandson in the face of a custody battle with his mother (her son’s former girlfriend, rehabbed but fragile) endures.

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MPs tell Johnson: you have a duty to help vaccinate the world

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Exclusive: group urges prime minister to tackle ‘desperate shortage’ in developing nations

Boris Johnson has a “moral duty” to immediately start matching each vaccine administered at home with a donated dose to poorer countries across the world, a cross-party group of MPs and peers has said.

Several Tory backbenchers joined the call, which puts further pressure on the prime minister to boost supplies given to developing nations facing a “desperate shortage” of jabs.

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Search for boy in Thames two miles from where woman’s body was recovered

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Emergency services are seeking a teenager who was seen getting into difficulty in the water

Emergency services were searching the Thames on Monday for a teenage boy who was seen getting into difficulty in the water, hours after the body of a woman was recovered from the river two miles away.

Thames Valley police said on Twitter that officers were at the river between Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, and Cookham, Berkshire on Monday, following a report of a fear-for-welfare incident.

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Britons face one-month deadline to retain rights in four EU countries

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Tens of thousands have yet to apply for post-Brexit residence in countries with 30 June cut-off date

Tens of thousands of British nationals in four EU member states have yet to apply for post-Brexit residence, meaning they risk losing the right to live and work there unless they file their demands within 30 days.

UK citizens living in France, Malta, Luxembourg and Latvia have until 30 June to apply to secure their post-Brexit rights. The Netherlands did have the same deadline, but on Monday extended it to 1 October.

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Attractiveness of British military for far right continues to be a threat

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Analysis: There have been multiple investigations under the Prevent counter-terrorism programme

The attractiveness of the armed forces for the far right is as old as British fascism’s earliest incarnations.

During the extreme right’s periodic postwar resurgences, groups such as Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement and later the National Front also coveted recruits from the military’s ranks.

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If India variant starts a third wave, England’s Covid rules may have to stay

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Analysis: hopes of restrictions ending on 21 June are dwindling as highly transmissible variant spreads

Heralded as “freedom day”, 21 June has been a date circled in the diary by businesses, families and communities alike – a moment when coronavirus restrictions in England are expected to finally end, hopefully in a blaze of summer sunshine.

But new data has revealed that the variant of concern first detected in India, known as B.1.617.2, has continued to spread across England, with samples containing the variant now found from Cornwall to Canterbury, Bury to Bromley.

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Covid: France enforces tighter restrictions on travel from UK

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Rules on non-essential journeys toughened amid concerns over spread of India variant from Britain

France has begun restricting non-essential travel from the UK due to concerns over the spread of the coronavirus variant first identified in India.

The regulations were announced last week but came into force from Monday when entry to France from Britain is permitted only for EU nationals, French residents or people travelling for “compelling reasons”. The rules apply to all air, car, ferry and train passengers, and to people who have been vaccinated.

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In rich countries, vaccines are making Covid-19 a manageable health issue | Devi Sridhar

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For the UK and elsewhere the pandemic’s end is in sight, but less fortunate parts of the world urgently need help

When Covid-19 began to spread rapidly in January 2020, governments across the world had limited strategies to deal with it. Without a vaccine or proven treatments for the disease, or even access to mass testing, the only choice political leaders faced was taking the least bad option available.

There were four approaches that different governments took during the beginning of the pandemic. China, New Zealand, Vietnam and Thailand chose to eliminate the virus at the cost of stopping international travel. Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea suppressed the virus through rigorous testing, tracing and isolating while avoiding harsh lockdowns. Sweden allowed the virus to spread through the population before realising health systems could not cope with an influx of Covid-19 patients. Meanwhile, European countries including England and France controlled the virus through a cycle of lockdown measures while keeping borders largely open. This resembled a holding pattern for a plane running out of fuel: people grew tired of continual restrictions, the economy suffered and Covid-19 was never fully suppressed.

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‘Right thing to do’: Afghan interpreters allowed to resettle in UK over safety fears – video

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Moves to relocate hundreds of Afghans who worked for the British military and government will be accelerated owing to fears for their safety as foreign forces prepare to leave the country. More than 3,000 Afghans, including their relatives, are expected to settle in the UK. The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, said it was ‘the right thing to do’, adding that ‘they sacrificed a lot to look after us and now we’re going to do the same’

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Coronavirus live news: Japan mulls tests for Olympics fans; India posts lowest case numbers since April

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Japan may require Games fans to test negative or show vaccine proof; India reports lowest case numbers since 11 April; signs UK is facing third wave

China today re-imposed anti-coronavirus travel controls on its southern province of Guangdong, announcing anyone leaving the populous region must be tested for the virus following a spike in infections that has alarmed authorities, the Associated Press reports. .

Guangdong, which borders Hong Kong, recorded 20 new confirmed cases, all contracted locally, in the 24 hours through to midnight yesterday.

Guangdong’s numbers are low compared with many places in the world, but the rise has rattled Chinese leaders who thought they had the disease under control.

Hello, this is Haroon Siddique. I’ll be updating the blog for the next few hours.

Burkina Faso, one of several countries in Africa that has yet to launch a Covid-19 vaccination campaign, received its first shipment under the global vaccine-sharing scheme Covax yesterday, Reuters reports, citing the country’s health ministry.

The 115,200 AstraZeneca doses were flown into the airport of the capital Ouagadougou and were welcomed by a local delegation led by health minister Charlemagne Ouedraogo.

“In a few weeks other vaccines will probably arrive to supplement what we have,” Ouedraogo said.

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More Afghans who worked for British forces to resettle in UK

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Government will step up scheme saving interpreters and others from reprisals as international troops leave

Moves to relocate to the UK hundreds of Afghans who worked for the British military and government will reportedly be accelerated as foreign forces leave the country.

The Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy was launched this year, allowing the Afghans, who mostly worked as interpreters, to settle in Britain. More than 1,400 Afghans and their families have already relocated to the UK, and hundreds more received funding for education and training.

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