Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Campaigners want urgent action to save neglected and vandalised graves in West Norwood Cemetery
Its beautiful Grade II* listed monuments were erected in memory of leading members of the Greek community in 19th-century London, but the graves in West Norwood cemetery are now in a dire state of neglect – with one decaying casket recently photographed covered in a thick layer of pigeon droppings, with a limb protruding.
Lambeth council, which compulsorily purchased the cemetery more than 50 years ago, recently withdrew security to save money and campaigners are calling for urgent action to protect listed monuments from ruin.
Scientists have warned ministers that a third wave of coronavirus may have already begun in Britain, casting doubt on plans in England to lift all lockdown restrictions in three weeks’ time.
Experts cautioned that any rise in coronavirus hospital admissions could leave the NHS struggling to cope as it battles to clear the huge backlog in non-Covid cases.
Jasmin Hartin was arrested near to location of body with ‘what appeared to be blood on her arms’
The partner of the son of Lord Ashcroft, a Conservative party donor and former treasurer, is being questioned in Belize over the killing of a police officer.
Jasmine Hartin was arrested on Friday following the discovery of the body of Supt Henry Jemmott on a pier in the resort town of San Pedro.
South Korea will get 1m doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine this week mainly to inoculate military personnel, after the United States almost doubled a pledge made earlier this month, prime minister Kim Boo-kyum said on Sunday.
South Korea has reported a lower death toll than many comparable developed countries from Covid-19, but the government has come under criticism for a comparatively slow rollout of vaccines, Reuters reports. Less than 11% of its 52 million people have so far received a first dose.
On care homes, UK vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi today defended the government approach.
Boris Johnson’s former aide Dominic Cummings claimed the health secretary, Matt Hancock, had lied to the prime minister over tests being carried out on those discharged into care homes – a charge denied by Hancock.
Matt Hancock was very much focused on delivery, I think it’s worth putting this in context … in the sense that in the eye of the storm, we were only able to do 2,000 tests a day. The diagnostics industry was almost non-existent in the UK.
We can sit here and sort of argue the toss about asymptomatic transmission … and when we really knew about that.
The whole point is you use every resource available to you, to the best of your ability, to save and to protect as many people as possible.
When the inquiry is held, and we will look at all these things in detail, we will of course examine where we could do better.
But to say that we didn’t deal with them to the best of our capability, with the resources that were available to us, is a mistake, is wrong.
Dominic Cummings will be asked by senior MPs this week to produce evidence that Matt Hancock lied repeatedly about policy on Covid-19 before the health secretary’s appearance in front of a parliamentary committee early next month.
Jeremy Hunt and Greg Clark, the chairs of the joint select committee which took seven hours of explosive testimony from Cummings last week, will write to the former adviser to the prime minister in the next few days asking that he produce the evidence within the next fortnight.
Campaigners concerned by controversial plans for tribunals where firms can seek compensation for effect of government policies
A free trade deal between the UK and Australia is on course to include a controversial system of secret courts that will allow businesses to seek compensation if their profits are hit by government policies.
In a move that has alarmed trade unions and anti-poverty campaigners, trade minister Greg Hands said UK negotiators were in talks with Australian officials over proposals to include a scheme that will arbitrate on disputes behind closed doors.
Prehistoric sites, dramatic scenery and sandy beaches earn the island the top spot for visitors, with Shetland coming second
The ancient standing stones and neolithic settlements of Orkney have earned it the title of best Scottish island, according to a survey from Which?
Readers were asked to rate 14 of the biggest of the hundreds of islands in Scotland’s waters, with 10 of them receiving an impressive visitor score of 80% or more.
The virus is now in a race with the vaccines and the victor is increasingly uncertain
The UK’s fine performance in sequencing Sars-CoV-2 genomes allows Public Health England to publish detailed analyses on the progress of variants and the latest report represents the changing of the guard. The B.1.1.7 lineage, first identified in Kent, had been dominant in the UK, but the B.1.617.2 lineage, first identified in India, comprised 58% of the most recent sequences, up from 44% the week before. There are strong regional differences, with under 10% of cases in Yorkshire and the Humber being the Indian-identified variant, while in north-west England that share is over 60%.
The main concern is about increased risk of transmission and reports also include estimates of what is known as the “secondary attack rate” (SAR), which simply means the proportion of an infected person’s contacts who also get infected. Using NHS test-and-trace data for recent non-travel cases, the estimated SAR for the B.1.1.7 variant was 8.1% (+/- 0.2%), while for the variant identified in India it was substantially higher at 13.5% (+/- 1.0%) – although these are likely to understate the true values due to the limitations of contact tracing.
Rising house prices and restrictions on overseas travel are leading to a surge in popularity for houseboats
Little more than six months ago, Paul and Anthony Smith-Storey were still living in a three-bedroom semi-detached house near St Helens in Merseyside. But now the couple – and their dog, Dexter – have traded it all in for a life afloat in a two-metre-wide narrowboat on Peak Forest Canal in Derbyshire.
“We took the equity out of the house, bought the boat and thought we’d enjoy it while we were still alive,” said Anthony, 48, an NHS sonographer. They are not the only ones.
PM says national flagship, a successor to the Royal Yacht Britannia, would promote British trade and industry around the world
A new national flagship, the successor to the Royal Yacht Britannia, will promote British trade and industry around the world, Boris Johnson has said.
The vessel would be used to host trade fairs, ministerial summits and diplomatic talks as the UK seeks to build links and boost exports following Brexit. It would be the first national flagship since Britannia, which was decommissioned in 1997, but the new vessel would be a ship rather than a luxury yacht.
Family car washed away at high tide near St Agnes after driver became stuck on a steep slipway while doing a three-point turn
Bemused residents and tourism officials in Cornwall have urged visitors to “engage their brains” after a family car got washed into the sea near St Agnes.
In the second such incident at Trevaunance Cove in the past eight months, the vehicle was swept away at high tide after the driver got stuck on a steep slipway while doing a three-point turn.
After more than two and a half hours of extraordinary testimony from Dominic Cummings to a Commons committee last Wednesday morning, Greg Clark, the former cabinet minister who had chaired the explosive morning session, called a short lunch break. He and his co-chair – the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt – had, like the other 20 MPs who were due to ask questions, been left stunned, appalled and riveted in equal measure by what they had just heard.
Expectations had been set high in advance of the appearance of the highly combustible Cummings. The ex-adviser had been forced out of Downing Street last November in a power struggle that had involved the prime minister’s fiancee, Carrie Symonds. Downing Street was on edge because Cummings had been firing off ominous preparatory salvoes on Twitter for days. But after a morning in the witness chair he had already exceeded his billing, unleashing accusations of such gravity that at times the MPs (and presumably much of the public watching on TV) found it all but impossible to keep up.
Tens of thousands of protesters have poured on to the streets of Brazil’s largest cities to demand the impeachment of President Jair Bolsonaro over his catastrophic response to a coronavirus pandemic that has claimed nearly half a million Brazilian lives.
The demonstrators turned out in more than 200 cities and towns for what is the biggest anti-Bolsonaro mobilisation since Brazil’s Covid outbreak began
Honest examination of French colonial record in Africa and responsibilty in Rwanda key to new strategy, though critics say little has changed
With the golden winter sun slanting across the palm trees and yellow sandstone, the scene was perfect. Emmanuel Macron and his host, Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, walked down the red carpet of the Union buildings in Pretoria as the Marseillaise resonated through the clean, crisp air.
The historic setting was apt. Since taking power in 2017, the French president has sought a broad reset of national strategy, relations and intervention in Africa. He has chosen a very contemporary way to do this: by re-examining the past.
On 12 August 2020 at 7.48am the first of a series of Home Office flights carrying asylum seekers left Stansted. This is the harrowing story of the hours before it took off and the anguish of those on board
At 7.15am, half an hour before charter flight Esparto 11 took off from Stansted airport, a detainee with a documented history of self-harm asked to use the plane’s bathroom. He was taken to the toilet by an escort working for the Home Office who held the door ajar with his foot and, after several minutes, peered inside to discover the detainee had slashed his wrist with a blade.
Pinning the man with his body weight to gain “control”, another officer squeezed into the bathroom and placed a handcuff on the wrist. According to an account written by officers, the handcuff was used to “[give] him pain”, a reference to a restraint technique which involves deliberately inflicting suffering to gain submission. In this case, most likely by twisting the cuff or pushing it into the wrist.
The survival of the Edinburgh festival fringe is at stake unless social distancing rules for venues are relaxed within a fortnight, its organiser has said.
Shona McCarthy, the chief executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, called on ministers to replace the 2-metre rule with the 1-metre distance used in hospitality in order to help secure the future of the world’s largest arts festival.
Cameron Deriggs, 18, appeared at Westminster magistrates court over shooting of Black Lives Matter activist
An 18-year-old man has appeared in court charged with conspiracy to murder in relation to the shooting of the Black Lives Matter activist Sasha Johnson.
Johnson, 27, was shot at a house party in Peckham, south-east London, in the early hours of Sunday and remains in a critical condition in hospital.
This vague messaging approach, scientists say, has been a persistent feature of the Covid response in England – to the public’s detriment – and now risks exacerbating a rise in Covid cases as people across the country gear up to travel to see their friends and family over the bank holiday. The continued risks of catching and spreading coronavirus haven’t been sufficiently explained to the public.
From face masks to the rule of six, we’ve got used to Covid restrictions over the past 14 months. But next week the government in England is expected to unveil its review of social distancing rules, ahead of the potential full unlocking of society on 21 June. Although it’s unlikely that recommendations on handwashing and ventilation will be dropped, others, such as restrictions on household mixing or the 1-metre-plus rule, could be lifted.
Doing so would help the hospitality and travel industries, allowing pubs, restaurants and other indoor venues to increase their capacity, and more people to travel abroad for work or holidays. However, with coronavirus resurfacing in some areas of the UK, and the rise of new variants, some have questioned whether this is a good idea.