Black Lives Matter activist, 27, remains in critical condition after shooting in early hours of Sunday
An 18-year-old has been charged with conspiracy to murder over the shooting of Black Lives Matter activist Sasha Johnson.
The 27-year-old remains in a critical condition in hospital after being injured at a party in Peckham, south-east London in the early hours of Sunday.
Continue reading...Newsreader confuses Bill Shakespeare, 81, ‘the first man to get the coronavirus vaccine’ with ‘one of the most important writers in the English language’
In what can only be described as a comedy of errors, an Argentinian TV news channel delivered a stunning, if slightly flawed, scoop on Thursday night when it reported that William Shakespeare, “one of the most important writers in the English language” had died five months after receiving the Covid vaccine.
The gaffe of, well, Shakespearean proportions happened after Noelia Novillo, a newsreader on Canal 26, mixed up the Bard with William “Bill” Shakespeare, an 81-year-old Warwickshire man who became the second person in the world to get the Pfizer vaccine.
Continue reading...Health secretary says jab made by US firm’s subsidiary Janssen will play important role in British programme
The UK’s medicines regulator has approved the use of a fourth Covid vaccine, as cases of the variant of concern first detected in India rise.
The jab from US-based pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson is considered a key tool in the global arsenal against Covid, given it is a one-dose regimen, unlike the the other three vaccines approved for UK use that require two shots to provide a high level of protection.
Continue reading...Nicola Sturgeon says it would be premature to move city out of tier 3 while situation remains ‘fragile’
Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed Glasgow will remain in Scotland’s second toughest lockdown regime for at least another week, and said the country as a whole may not move down a tier, after Covid cases continued to rise.
The first minister said the latest infection and hospitalisation figures in Greater Glasgow and Clyde showed cases were rising, so it would be unwise to move the city down from tier 3 to 2 this weekend.
Continue reading...World’s poorest nations saddled with ‘imprisoning’ debt, hampering responses to the pandemic, say activists protesting HSBC meeting
Activists at a demonstration outside the annual general meeting of HSBC in London have demanded the bank and other financial giants provide debt relief to African countries hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
In an attempt to highlight the role of private creditors in the debt crises of the world’s poorest countries, campaigners with “drop the debt” banners gathered outside HSBC’s AGM at the Southbank Centre.
Continue reading...Rock Feilding-Mellen said he was emailed about potential cladding change but didn’t understand significance
Rock Feilding-Mellen, the Tory councillor in charge of the Grenfell Tower refurbishment, was informed of plans to save money by swapping zinc cladding for aluminium in 2014 but initially told police he only knew about it after the June 2017 fire, a statement released to the public inquiry show.
The switch led to the use of combustible cladding that became the main cause of the fire’s spread. Feilding-Mellen, the cabinet member for housing at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London, said he had no idea about the different properties of the two materials.
Continue reading...Post-Brexit rules allow travel without visas, but border officials have wide powers to exclude visitors
The number of EU citizens being prevented from entering the UK has soared over the past three months despite a massive reduction in travel because of Covid, according to Home Office figures.
A total of 3,294 EU citizens were prevented from entering the UK, even though post-Brexit rules mean they are allowed to visit the country without visas. That compares with 493 EU citizens in the first quarter of last year, when air traffic was 20 times higher.
Continue reading...Dominic Cummings’ litany of claims against the government should be formally investigated, say families
Boris Johnson is facing a growing clamour to bring forward the start of the coronavirus public inquiry after Dominic Cummings’ allegations triggered a “political pantomime” that disrespects the victims of the pandemic, their relatives said.
The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group, which represents thousands of grieving people, called for an urgent start to the inquiry, which is due to begin in spring 2022.
Continue reading...Analysis: Scientists agree with the former adviser’s claim, with one calling the estimate ‘conservative’
One of the most shocking allegations made by Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings during Wednesday’s joint parliamentary committee hearing was his claim that “tens of thousands of people died who didn’t need to die”, because of the way the government handled the Covid pandemic.
His claims have some support from scientists, who have estimated that the toll from government delays could be as high as 33,000 lives.
Continue reading...Latest updates: Labour leader says public Covid inquiry should be brought forward; PM rejects claim tens of thousands died needlessly
At first minister’s questions in Edinburgh Nicola Sturgeon suggested that Boris Johnson’s failure to act swiftly at certain times in the pandemic had led to “loss of life”. As the Herald reports, Sturgeon said:
Sometimes I’m afraid, in the interests of health and human life, it is necessary for people in leadership positions like me to take very quick decisions because, as we know from bitter experience over this pandemic, it’s often the failure to take quick and firm decisions that leads to loss of life.
And anybody who’s in any doubt about that only had to listen to a fraction of what Dominic Cummings outlined about what he described as the chaotic response of the UK government at key moments of this pandemic.
New absence figures published by the Department for Education reveal that 60% of pupils in England were kept out of school for Covid-related reasons at some time last autumn.
The national data for the term that began when schools reopened in September shows that pupils missed 33 million days in the classroom because of Covid, through having to self-isolate or for shielding reasons. That sent the overall absence rate to nearly 12% for the term, compared with less than 5% in a normal term.
The government’s refusal to give schools any flexibility to finish in-school teaching early before Christmas, which was accompanied by threats of legal action, made matters even worse.
The prime minister’s former senior adviser spoke yesterday of the government’s shortcomings in the handling of this crisis and it is certainly the case that schools and colleges were badly let down by government leadership during the autumn term.
Continue reading...Family of Mary Bastholm, who disappeared in 1968, were hoping to get closure to put her to rest
The family of a teenager suspected to have been a victim of the serial killer Fred West have expressed sadness that her remains have not been found after the basement of a Gloucester cafe was excavated by police.
Relatives of 15-year-old Mary Bastholm, who vanished in 1968, said they still hoped the mystery of what happened to her will one day be solved.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson has rejected claims by his former chief aide Dominic Cummings that tens of thousands of people died of Covid-19 unnecessarily because of government mistakes. 'Some of the commentary I've heard doesn't bear any relation to reality,' the prime minister said on a visit to a Colchester hospital. 'We followed to the best we could the data and the guidance we had'
EU citizens stopped by Border Force officers tell of being fingerprinted, detained and treated ‘like criminals’
EU tourists coming to the UK have told of being fingerprinted, detained and treated like liars by border officials before trying to travel through the Channel tunnel or by ferry at Calais.
Sergio D’Alberti, a 51-year-old Italian hotel manager currently out of work due to the Covid pandemic, told the Guardian he was held for seven hours at the French port after UK Border Force officials concluded he would be a potential drain on the benefits system.
Continue reading...AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson jabs have caused rare blood clots but scientists say they can be redesigned to avoid problem
A team of German scientists believe that they have worked out why some people given the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines against Covid-19 develop blood clots – and claim they can tell the manufacturers how to improve the vaccine to avoid it.
The key is in the adenovirus – the common cold virus that is used to deliver the spike protein of the coronavirus into the body, say Rolf Marschalek, a professor at Goethe university in Frankfurt, and colleagues. The mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna do not use this delivery system and there have been no blood clotting cases linked to them.
Continue reading...Former aide paints picture of media-obsessed PM and chaotic pandemic response in evidence to MPs
Dominic Cummings has laid bare the “surreal” chaos in Downing Street in March last year as the government grappled with the Covid pandemic, portraying the prime minister as obsessed with the media and making constant U-turns, “like a shopping trolley smashing from one side of the aisle to the other”.
During an extraordinary evidence session to MPs at Westminster on Wednesday, Boris Johnson’s former chief aide targeted the prime minister for personal criticism, accusing him of being “unfit for the job”.
Continue reading...Researchers have discovered that prolonged immersion in a piping hot bath has many of the same medical benefits as aerobic exercise
Name: Hot baths.
Age: First used by the ancient Egyptians 4,000 years ago.
Continue reading...Leeds headteacher forced to apologise after saying Palestinian flag was seen as ‘call to arms’
The recent Middle East conflict has prompted a wave of pro-Palestine protests in British schools and controversy over the staff response, with pupils being accused of antisemitism and one headteacher describing the Palestinian flag as a “call to arms”.
Mike Roper, the headteacher of Allerton Grange high school in Leeds, was forced to apologise after he claimed in an assembly that some people saw the flag as a “symbol of antisemitism”.
Continue reading...Bethan Roper, 28, of south Wales, was killed travelling home from Christmas shopping trip in 2018
A woman died after she was struck by an overhanging tree branch when she leant out of a train window as she travelled home after a Christmas shopping trip, an inquest has heard.
Bethan Roper, 28, who worked for the Welsh Refugee Council, sustained fatal head injuries while a passenger on a Great Western Railway (GWR) train travelling at about 75mph.
Continue reading...Local leaders say latest guidance – updated following criticism – was not what was agreed at meeting on Tuesday
Ministers are facing fresh opposition from local authorities over updated travel advice urging people to minimise travel to areas with higher coronavirus cases.
The government revised its official guidance on Tuesday following criticism that it had introduced a lockdown “by stealth” by urging people to avoid all but essential travel to eight Covid hotspots in England.
Continue reading...Children’s commissioners of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland say policy breaches human rights
The children’s commissioners of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have written to the UK government calling on it to scrap the controversial two-child limit restricting the amount that larger families can receive in social security benefits.
In the joint letter to the work and pensions secretary, Thérèse Coffey, the three commissioners – respectively Sally Holland, Bruce Adamson and Koulla Yiasouma – argue the policy is a “clear breach of children’s human rights”.
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