Category Archives: UK news

Jo Whiley says vaccine offer for her sister ‘too late’ as she fights Covid – video

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The BBC Radio 2 DJ says ‘it couldn’t be crueller’ after her sister, Frances, has finally been offered a Covid vaccine, but it may have come too late.

Whiley said it had been the worst week of her family’s lives and 24 hours ago medical staff were discussing palliative care for her sister, although on Saturday she rallied round and her oxygen levels were beginning to rise.

Whiley said she hoped speaking out about her sister’s experience would highlight the need to get people with learning disabilities vaccinated as soon as possible

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Scientists say clinical trials for ‘variant-proof’ vaccines could start very soon

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From immunity to blocking transmission of the virus, labs across the UK are hunting for second-generation jabs


Scientists are developing a range of second-generation Covid vaccines aimed at expanding protection against the disease.

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Ban on outside sport can end, top scientist urges Johnson

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Call comes as prime minister aims for all adults to be vaccinated by July

Data on the number of Covid-19 cases is now so encouraging that outdoor sports for children and small numbers of adults should be allowed immediately as part of an accelerated easing of the lockdown, a leading scientist and adviser to government has told the Observer.

With the prime minister expected to take a cautious approach to lifting restrictions in a statement to the House of Commons on Monday, Prof Mark Woolhouse of Edinburgh University, whose work feeds into the Sage committee’s sub-group Spi-M, said the data showed there was no need for the government to be “ultra-cautious”.

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21-year-old UK teacher becomes youngest woman to row Atlantic solo

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Jasmine Harrison made the record-breaking journey in 70 days, three hours and 48 minutes

A 21-year-old swimming teacher from North Yorkshire has become the youngest woman to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

Jasmine Harrison, a part-time teacher and bartender from Thirsk, began the journey in December when she departed from La Gomera in the Canary Islands. It took her 70 days, three hours and 48 minutes to reach Antigua.

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Prince of Wales visits his father Prince Philip in hospital

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Duke of Edinburgh was admitted to King Edward VII’s hospital in London on Tuesday after feeling unwell

The Prince of Wales has visited his father the Duke of Edinburgh in hospital.

Philip, 99, was admitted to King Edward VII’s hospital in London on Tuesday evening as a precautionary measure after feeling unwell and walked unaided into the medical centre.

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Tobacco giant bets £1bn on social-media influencers to boost ‘lung-friendlier’ sales

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As smoking falls out of fashion, BAT is pinning its hopes on younger users of e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches

Flashing an ice-white smile for her 50,000 followers on TikTok, a fresh-faced young woman pops a flavoured nicotine pouch into her mouth, as one of Pakistan’s most popular love songs plays in the background.

More than 3,000 miles away, in Sweden, another social media starlet lip-syncs for the camera, to a different pop tune. The same little pouches, made by British American Tobacco, appear in shot.

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Ports feel the chill as trade re-routes around Brexit Britain

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In Holyhead, traffic has fallen 50% as hauliers stymied by Brexit find their way from Ireland to France without entering the UK

Perched on the shores of Anglesey, the island linked by road bridges to the north-west coast of Wales, Holyhead’s geography has given it a leading role in British-Irish trade since the early 19th century.

About 50 miles directly across the Irish Sea from Dublin, a journey of just three-and-a-quarter hours by ferry, Holyhead was until December the second busiest roll-on roll-off port in the UK after Dover. About 450,000 trucks rumbled through each year on their way to Dublin, with cargoes of meat and agricultural produce, secondhand cars and items destined for the shelves of Irish supermarkets.

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Prince Philip set to remain in hospital into next week

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Duke of Edinburgh was admitted to King Edward VII’s hospital in London after feeling unwell

The Duke of Edinburgh is expected to remain in hospital for “observation and rest” into next week, sources have said.

Prince Philip was admitted to King Edward VII’s hospital on Tuesday evening after feeling unwell and walked unaided into the medical centre.

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Harry and Meghan turn away from Britain and towards world stage

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Analysis: Couple’s treatment by a critical UK press made any return as working royals unlikely

The decision by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to permanently step down as working royals comes as no surprise.

When they first announced their wish to no longer perform royal duties, and to become financially independent – blindsiding Buckingham Palace by making their intentions public before matters had been negotiated with the Queen – it was hard to see how they could return.

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Workers clear ‘huge, disgusting’ fatberg from London sewer

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Public told to watch what they flush after workers take two weeks to free blockage

Members of the public have been urged to be careful what they flush after a “huge, disgusting” fatberg the weight of a small bungalow was cleared from an east London sewer.

Thames Water engineers and MTS Cleansing Services spent two weeks using high-powered water jets and hand tools to chip away at and eventually remove the rock-like heap, which was said to have smelled like composting festival toilets and rotten meat, from a conduit in Canary Wharf.

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The path out of lockdown: can Boris Johnson keep his boosterism at bay?

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England waits to see if PM will stay restrained or bow to backbench pressure with Covid plan

It was an uncharacteristically subdued Boris Johnson who announced from Downing Street that Britain had surpassed the first, phenomenally ambitious target of giving 15 million people a coronavirus vaccine: this was a success, yes, but it was “no moment to relax”, the prime minister said on Monday.

The boosterish rhetoric has been restrained for several weeks – gone is the talk that led to claims there would be normality by November last year, or that it would be “inhuman” to cancel Christmas. Now, escape from the third lockdown must be “cautious but irreversible”.

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Harry and Meghan will not return as working royals, says palace

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Duke and Duchess of Sussex to give up honorary military appointments and royal patronages

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will not return as working members of the royal family, Buckingham Palace has said.

Prince Harry and Meghan are also giving up their royal patronages. The announcement follows weeks of speculation about their future as the one-year review of their position, announced at the time they moved away from the UK, neared.

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Uber drivers are workers, UK supreme court rules

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Decision means drivers will be entitled to basic rights such as paid holidays, say lawyers

The UK supreme court has dismissed Uber’s appeal against a landmark employment tribunal ruling that its drivers should be classed as workers with access to the minimum wage and paid holidays.

Six justices handed down a unanimous decision backing the October 2016 employment tribunal ruling that could affect millions of workers in the gig economy.

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Northern Ireland firms optimistic Brexit barriers will be eased

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Business leaders buoyed by meeting with Michael Gove and EU counterpart on protocol glitches

Business leaders in Northern Ireland are optimistic that Brexit barriers preventing parcels, pets, potatoes and plants getting to the region from Britain will be eased after a meeting between Michael Gove and his EU counterpart, Maroš Šefčovič, on Thursday.

They said the UK and the EU had a legitimate reason to remove or ease the barriers because they were having an impact on daily lives, in breach of a pledge in the Northern Ireland protocol that states the “application of this protocol should impact as little as possible on the everyday life of communities in both Ireland and Northern Ireland”.

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Human destruction of nature is ‘senseless and suicidal’, warns UN chief

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UN report offers bedrock for hope for broken planet, says António Guterres

Humanity is waging a “senseless and suicidal” war on nature that is causing human suffering and enormous economic losses while accelerating the destruction of life on Earth, the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, has said.

Guterres’s starkest warning to date came at the launch of a UN report setting out the triple emergency the world is in: the climate crisis, the devastation of wildlife and nature, and the pollution that causes many millions of early deaths every year.

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Facebook is ‘schoolyard bully’ in Australia news row, says UK media boss

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Trade group chairman says robust regulation is needed to rein in monopolistic tech firms

Facebook’s move to block all media content in Australia shows why countries need robust regulation to stop tech firms behaving like a “schoolyard bully”, the head of the UK’s news media trade group has said.

Henry Faure Walker, the chair of the News Media Association, said Facebook’s ban during a pandemic was “a classic example of a monopoly power being the schoolyard bully, trying to protect its dominant position with scant regard for the citizens and customers it supposedly serves”.

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‘6.2cm-tall man’ offered priority Covid vaccine after NHS blunder

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Liam Thorp, whose real height is 6ft 2in, was recorded as having a BMI of 28,000

A 32-year-old man with no underlying health conditions was offered a Covid vaccine early because of a blunder at his GP surgery which recorded him as being 6.2cm tall, giving him an astonishing body mass index (BMI) of 28,000.

The Liverpool Echo’s political editor, Liam Thorp, said he was left “really confused” after he was offered the jab this week seemingly ahead of the government’s rollout plan, and shared the “frankly surreal” experience in a Twitter thread which quickly went viral.

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Rihanna angers Hindus with ‘disrespectful’ Ganesha pendant

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Comments on singer’s Instagram account say wearing likeness of god is cultural appropriation

The singer Rihanna has angered the Hindu community with a “disrespectful” Instagram picture in which she wears a diamond-studded pendant featuring the Hindu god Ganesha.

Commenters on her Instagram account have called the wearing of the likeness of the god around her neck cultural appropriation.

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Mindfulness, laughter and robot dogs may relieve lockdown loneliness – study

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University of Cambridge researchers identify potentially effective interventions to help people

Robotic dogs, laughter therapy and mindfulness could help people cope with loneliness and social isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers at the University of Cambridge have found.

The team at the university’s School of Medicine, led by Dr Christopher Williams, reviewed 58 existing studies on loneliness and identified interventions that could be adapted for people living in lockdown or under pandemic-related social distancing measures.

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