Research from Public Health England suggests that protection conferred a fortnight after vaccination
A single dose of a Covid-19 vaccine can slash transmission of the virus by up to half, according to a Public Health England study.
The PHE finding offers further hope that the pandemic can be brought under control as it indicates that vaccinated people are far less likely to pass the virus on to others.
Continue reading...KCTMO censored blog by Grenfell Action Group which warned of a potentially disastrous fire, inquiry hears
Grenfell Tower’s landlord blocked staff computers from accessing a residents’ blog which raised concerns about the building’s refurbishment and warned of a potentially disastrous fire, the inquiry into the 14 June 2017 blaze has heard.
The Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (TMO) considered the Grenfell Action Group blog “scaremongering and potentially frightening to the residents”. It blocked access to it on its servers so staff working on the project could not view posts from around 2013 onwards.
Continue reading...Johnson faces growing disquiet after allegations he was loaned £58,000 from party funds while being seen to personally foot the bill
Boris Johnson is being urged by senior Tories to come clean about the funding of his flat refurbishment as it emerged that a former Labour chancellor refused to join a trust overseeing Downing Street upkeep out of concerns it could lead to a cash-for-access scandal.
The prime minister faced growing disquiet from within his own party on Tuesday over allegations that he was loaned £58,000 from Conservative party funds while being seen to personally foot the bill for renovations of his Downing Street residence.
Continue reading...Former minister Lady Sugg also accuses Foreign Office of cutting key sexual health programmes
Lady Sugg, a former Foreign Office minister, has challenged her onetime boss Dominic Raab to admit he is cutting the UK aid budget for girls’ education by more than 40% as the foreign secretary also suggested UK bilateral aid to Africa would be reduced to a third of what it was two years ago.
She also claimed the government was planning to close its flagship Women’s Integrated Sexual Health programme and impose cuts of about 70-80% to spending on the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition.
Continue reading...Fresh picture is emerging of government infighting as Covid-19 cases ticked upwards in the autumn
It is a well-worn tale in Westminster that Boris Johnson used to joke that his political hero was the mayor in the film Jaws, who defied advice and kept the beaches open, despite a shark attack and the risk of further attacks.
It is that metaphor that seems particularly apt as sources recall the events in the run-up to England’s second lockdown. A different picture is now emerging of the battles that went on within government as Covid-19 cases ticked upwards in the autumn.
Continue reading...Tulip Siddiq MP says PM did not even send UK officials to recent trial where Iran jailed dual national for further year
Boris Johnson has been accused of a “dismal failure” in his diplomatic efforts after Iran sentenced Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to a further year in jail on top of the five-year sentence she has already served.
Labour’s Tulip Siddiq, the British-Iranian dual national’s MP, questioned the effort the prime minister had put into releasing Zaghari-Ratcliffe, telling the Commons: “From where I’m standing, I’ve seen no evidence on the part of the prime minister so far.
Continue reading...Jamie Reuben’s involvement in bid supported by Boris Johnson raises more cronyism questions
An investor in the planned takeover of Newcastle United that received high-level support from Boris Johnson last year is a major Conservative party donor who has personally funded the prime minister’s constituency office and leadership campaign.
Jamie Reuben, 34, his father, David, and uncle Simon, who own the Reuben Brothers property development empire, were co-investors with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF), and the financier Amanda Staveley, in the £300m bid to buy the Premier League club from Mike Ashley.
Continue reading...Setting means iPhone users can stop advertisers following their digital lives – to the ire of Facebook
Users of iPhones can now prevent advertisers tracking them across their apps, after the release of the latest software update from Apple introduced the controversial feature despite the protests of Facebook and the advertising industry.
The update, iOS 14.5, includes a setting called “app tracking transparency”, which for the first time requires applications to ask for users’ consent before they are able to track their activity across other apps and websites.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Torture survivors and lone children stuck in Greece and Italy after Home Office ‘deliberately’ ends cooperation on family reunions
The Home Office has been accused of failing to reunite vulnerable refugees who have the right to join family in the UK under EU law, leaving lone children and torture survivors stranded.
The government faced widespread criticism when it announced that family reunion law would no longer apply after the UK left the EU, and it promised that cases under way on that date would be allowed to proceed.
Continue reading...European commission president speaks before MEPs prepare to consent to Brexit agreement
Ursula von der Leyen has warned that the EU will not hesitate to use the “real teeth” in the Brexit deal to punish the British government for breaching its obligations as MEPs prepared to consent to the historic agreement, marking the end of four years of high political drama.
Speaking ahead of an evening vote by MEPs, where a positive result is not in question, the European commission president said the trade and cooperation agreement would give the EU more leverage over the UK.
Continue reading...Airport’s plan not in the interests of consumers, says Civil Aviation Authority
Heathrow’s request to increase airport charges to recoup £2.6bn lost during the pandemic has been rejected by the UK’s aviation regulator.
The Civil Aviation Authority’s consumers and markets director, Paul Smith, described the plan as “disproportionate and not in the interests of consumers”.
Continue reading...Younger people invited to get jab at more than 1,600 sites across country
The Covid-19 vaccine rollout has been extended in England for the second time in two days. Adults aged 42 and over are now able to book their jab.
Here are your questions answered as the NHS in England takes another step forward in the biggest vaccination programme in its history.
Continue reading...Powering Past Coal Alliance accused of failing to follow up on pledges as many countries expand use of coal
An attempt by the UK government to encourage countries and businesses around the world to quit coal for power generation is failing to make an impact, and in danger of being used as “greenwash”, an assessment has found.
The Powering Past Coal Alliance, led by the UK and Canada, with 111 members including 24 governments, local governments and businesses, is a key plank of Boris Johnson’s strategy for vital UN climate talks to be hosted in Glasgow in November.
Continue reading...Thérèse Coffey says public does not care about makeover of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street flat
Soon-to-be-published annual accounts will “tidy up” the controversy over the funding of the refurbishment of the prime minister’s Downing Street flat, according to a government minister.
In an interview with Sky News, the work and pensions secretary, Thérèse Coffey, sought to play down growing accusations of sleaze, and claimed the public did not care about the makeover of the apartment after the prime minister said he would foot the £58,000 bill himself.
Continue reading...Witnesses will be asked to respond to claims the ’Ndrangheta has laundered billions of euros in City of London
In a high-security, 1,000-capacity courtroom converted from a call centre, Italy’s largest mafia trial in three decades is under way in Lamezia Terme, Calabria. About 900 witnesses are set to testify against more than 350 defendants, including politicians and officials charged with being members of the ’Ndrangheta, Italy’s most powerful criminal group.
Several of the defendants will be asked to respond to charges of money laundering over establishing companies in the UK with the alleged purpose of simulating legitimate economic activity.
Continue reading...From Quito to Kathmandu, millions will be endangered by cuts affecting planning for floods, earthquakes and fires, experts say
UK aid cuts to a programme working to reduce the disaster risk to poor communities around the world could endanger millions of lives and slam shut a brief window of opportunity to build safer cities for centuries to come, experts have warned.
Professor John McCloskey, from Edinburgh University, said the 70% cut to this year’s budget for the Tomorrow’s Cities project was an act of “vandalism” that had wrecked the past two years of collaboration with scientists, NGOs, authorities and communities in Ecuador’s capital Quito, Nairobi, Kathmandu and Istanbul.
Continue reading...Donna, 42, was a devoted and popular member of the teaching staff. Yet at the height of the second wave, working conditions left her terrified of doing the job she loved
The joke went: it was impossible to get Covid at Burnley College. The virus didn’t exist there. All through September, October, November and December 2020, as more and more people came down with Covid yet the further education (FE) college stayed open, Donna Coleman would make this gag to her sisters, Steph Coleman, 38, and Vicki Coleman, 45. She spoke to them on the phone every day. “It was a running joke,” Steph says. “‘Who’s come down with Covid now?’”
Although the sisters laughed about it, in truth they were alarmed. Donna was a member of the teaching staff at the college in Lancashire. She worked with teenagers who had been kicked out of school, as well as long-term unemployed people, helping them to continue their education or find work. (Steph and Vicki had previously worked at the college, too, although they had left by September 2020.)
Continue reading...Trevor Lindley on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s commitment to equal treatment of all ranks in memorials
John Batey is wrong to say “The British army buries its dead in separate sections of ‘officers and men’” (Letters, 23 April). Early in the formation of the then Imperial War Graves Commission, Fabian Ware, founder of the commission, stated that “no distinction should be made between officers and men lying in the same cemeteries in the form or nature of the memorials”.
In January 1918, the commission said the “governing consideration” in its decision on the uniformity of military graves was that “those who have given their lives are members of one family … and that, in death, all, from General to Private, of whatever race or creed, should receive equal honour under a memorial which should be the common symbol of their comradeship and of the cause for which they died”.
Trevor Lindley
Weymouth, Dorset
Rich countries urged to stump up to help developing nations cut greenhouse gas emissions
Boris Johnson must push rich countries meeting in Cornwall in June to come up with tens of billions of dollars more in aid for poor countries to deal with climate breakdown, or face the failure of vital UN climate talks to be hosted by the UK in Glasgow in November, according to leading climate experts.
The UK holds the presidency this year both of the annual meeting of the G7 group of the world’s economic superpowers, and of the Cop26 climate summit.
Continue reading...Two veterans plead not guilty at Belfast crown court in trial over shooting of Joe McCann in 1972
Two former paratroopers have denied murdering an Official IRA commander during the Troubles, in a closely watched trial in Northern Ireland.
The two veterans, known as soldiers A and C, pleaded not guilty at Belfast crown court on Monday at the start of a trial over the shooting of Joe McCann on 15 April 1972.
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