Explosion heard for miles around and leaves crater the size of double-decker bus
Thousands of people have been forced to spend a second night out of their homes after a suspected second world war bomb discovered in Exeter was detonated.
The noise of the explosion heard for miles around and left a crater the size of a double-decker bus, police said on Saturday night, as well as sending debris up to 250 metres away from the site of the blast.
Continue reading...Vauxhall’s Ellesmere Port plant is one of many whose future lies in the hands of the merged auto giant
Carlos Tavares is an unashamed petrolhead, with a rally-racing hobby that harks back to an earlier automotive age. Yet carmakers like Stellantis, which he leads, and its rivals have had to set aside affection for roaring internal combustion engines as environmental rules set the limits for the industry.
Stellantis was formed in January in a €50bn (£43bn) merger between France’s Peugeot and Italian-American Fiat Chrysler, in one of the clearest responses to the Tesla-driven electric revolution: the merger will allow them to share expensive investments in battery technology.
Continue reading...Government data shows 19.6m get first jab and up to 770,000 inoculated a second time
More than 20 million people in the UK have received at least a first dose of coronavirus vaccine, with under 4% of those given as second doses.
Government data shows that of the 20.5m jabs given in the UK up to 26 February, 19.6m were first doses.
Continue reading...The latest answers to the important medical questions about the vaccines and the pandemic
The prospects of vaccines failing to trigger immune responses are dismissed as remote by scientists. “If a vaccine has not been properly refrigerated that might pose problems but doctors take great care to ensure that doesn’t happen,” said Prof Helen Fletcher at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “Frankly the only other way to get a failed reaction is for the doctor to miss your arm – which isn’t likely.”
Continue reading...The Sussexes are the latest in a line of celebrities to try to rebuild their image by talking to the chatshow queen
You could have forgiven the British royal family for giving primetime, tell-all interviews a wide berth for the foreseeable. The evisceration of Prince Andrew by the BBC’s Emily Maitlis in 2019 managed to achieve the near-impossible: making the Duke of York appear more dubious and less sympathetic.
But if we have learned one thing about the Sussexes, Harry and Meghan, it’s that they are intent on doing pretty much the opposite of what the other royals want them to do. So next Sunday, 7 March, a 90-minute special, Oprah with Meghan and Harry, will air on the US network CBS. There is also understood to be a bidding war between UK broadcasters – though not the BBC – for the interview, which, it is promised, will be “intimate” and “wide-ranging”.
Continue reading...Spate of audacious and often violent robberies leads to boom in sales of high-security animal accessories
A spate of dognapping in recent months has led to growing numbers of owners buying lockable, steel-core collars and leads that cannot be severed by bolt cutters as they walk their pets.
Dog theft has risen as animals available to buy have become scarcer since the pandemic began. The average cost of a puppy doubled to nearly £1,900 last year, and some breeds are worth more than £6,000.
Continue reading...Surge in cases expected as schools reopen and charities report 70% rise in demand for services
A surge in child mental health cases is expected to emerge as schools reopen next week, amid warnings of a “crisis on top of a crisis” hitting vulnerable children during the pandemic.
Paediatricians, psychologists and charitable groups providing mental health support all told the Observer they were seeing increasing demand and warned of another surge as lockdown is lifted. Several reported longer waiting lists for young people in need of help.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak warns of risk to economy; Joe Biden tells US ‘now is not the time to relax - follow all the day’s news as it happens
Attendees have been asked to stand while a verse from the war poem For the Fallen were read at Captain Tom Moore’s funeral.
The bugler is now playing The Last Post.
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Sarwar wins snap election triggered by surprise resignation of Richard Leonard six weeks ago
Anas Sarwar has won the Scottish Labour leadership contest after a snap election triggered by the surprise resignation of Richard Leonard six weeks ago.
Sarwar, a former deputy leader of Scottish Labour backed by a majority of the party’s parliamentarians, defeated the other candidate Monica Lennon, a less experienced MSP backed on the party’s left, winning 57.6% of the vote.
Continue reading...Former first minister launches a stinging attack on the SNP during evidence to a Holyrood inquiry
Alex Salmond has suggested that weak and incompetent leadership of Scotland’s institutions could undermine the case for independence, in a bitter attack on his former allies and party.
The former first minister said huge deficiencies had been exposed in the running of the Scottish government and the Crown Office, as he blamed both institutions for forcing him to live through a “nightmare” during the last three years.
Continue reading...England's deputy chief medical officer has told people not to break the country's lockdown rules ahead of official relaxations, particularly those who have received their Covid vaccinations. With worrying signs cases might be rising slightly, Van-Tam said the country was not yet 'in the right place' and pressed people not to 'wreck this now'
Continue reading...UK FTSE was down 2.5%, its biggest one-day fall in percentage terms since the end of October
Global stock markets ended February deep in the red, as fears of higher inflation prompted a sell-off in government bonds and spread anxiety across financial markets.
The UK’s FTSE 100 index fell 168 points to 6,483, a 2.5% drop – the biggest one-day fall in percentage terms since the end of October.
Continue reading...Compliance with lockdown is proving increasingly hard for people in relationships who don’t live together
Since most of the UK went back into lockdown on 5 January, people have once again been forced to “stay at home, save lives”. But with “pandemic burnout” on the rise many say compliance is proving increasingly difficult.
People in relationships who do not live with their partner have been in a tough position throughout the pandemic. Faced with the prospect of breaking lockdown or breaking up, many couples have opted for the former.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Sylvie Bermann, who has written book in attempt to understand Brexit, says question of Britain’s identity was key
When Sylvie Bermann arrived in August 2014 as France’s new ambassador, London was, she says, a city of “extraordinary dynamism and optimism”.
French cabinet ministers were queuing up to visit, she said, one after the other, all searching for “Britain’s recipe for success. It was an an astonishing place.”
Continue reading...Al-Hawl camp, where Shamima Begum surfaced, is focal point of humanitarian crisis starring unsympathetic protagonists
When 20-year-old Shamima Begum, heavily pregnant and alone, managed to escape the US-led coalition bombing of Islamic State’s last stronghold two years ago, she left behind a scene resembling hell and entered limbo instead.
Begum was among an astonishing 64,000 women and children who poured out of Baghuz, a tiny oasis town on the Euphrates river, deep in the Syrian desert. Many of their husbands and fathers died defending the last sliver of the so-called caliphate.
Continue reading...Begum, who fled as a schoolgirl to join Isis in Syria, will not be able to re-enter UK to fight case in person
Shamima Begum, who fled Britain as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State in Syria, has failed to restore her British citizenship after the supreme court ruled she had lost her case.
The judgment on Friday from the UK’s highest court is a critical – and controversial – test case of the UK’s policy to strip the citizenship of Britons who went to join Isis and are being detained by Syrian Kurdish groups without trial.
Continue reading...Duke of Sussex says he is happier with series than news stories about Meghan or his family
The Duke of Sussex has defended the Netflix series The Crown, saying that – while it was not “strictly accurate” – it portrayed the pressures of royal life.
In an interview with James Corden for the US programme The Late Late Show, Prince Harry said he minded the intrusions of the media into his family’s life much more than the miniseries, which was “obviously fiction”.
Continue reading...Cambridge doctors record sharp fall in infections after 12 days in Covid test analysis on healthcare workers
A single dose of the Pfizer vaccine can reduce asymptomatic infections by 75%, according to research that suggests the jab could substantially curtail transmission of the disease.
Doctors in Cambridge recorded the sharp fall in infections after 12 days of the first shot in an analysis of Covid tests performed on healthcare workers in the last two weeks of January.
Continue reading...Company says sewage plan would avoid 105,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over 30 years
Thousands of homes in south-west London could soon be warmed by the waste from their local sewage works as part of England’s first poo-powered district heating scheme.
Thames Water hopes to harness the heat of human waste from its treatment plant in Kingston upon Thames to warm more than 2,000 new homes that form part of a regeneration plan for the borough’s Cambridge Road estate.
Continue reading...The Queen said her Covid-19 jab 'didn’t hurt at all' in a video call with health officials leading vaccine deployment across the UK.
The monarch praised the vaccine programme, describing its speed and the rapid progress as 'remarkable', and in a morale boost told the health leaders to 'keep up the good work'
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