Margaret Keenan was given vaccine on Tuesday morning in Coventry following its approval last week
Margaret Keenan, 90, became the first patient in the world to receive the Pfizer Covid-19 jab following its clinical approval as the NHS launched its biggest ever vaccine campaign on Tuesday.
Keenan received the jab at about 6.45am in Coventry, marking the start of a historic mass vaccination programme.
Continue reading...Changes intended to benefit innocent suspects kept some attackers at liberty until trial
Victims have been left unprotected and a suspected paedophile left free to strike after government changes to bail plunged parts of the criminal justice system into chaos, an official report has found.
The report from the police and prosecution inspectorates found damage was caused to the confidence of domestic abuse victims, whose alleged attackers were left free without restrictions while cases came to court.
Continue reading...Pilot planned for January will give subjects a shot of both Oxford/AstraZeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech versions
A trial is likely to go ahead in January to find out whether mixing and matching Covid vaccines gives better protection than two doses of the same one, the head of the British government’s taskforce has said.
The Pfizer/BioNTech Covid jab is an mRNA vaccine. Essentially, mRNA is a molecule used by living cells to turn the gene sequences in DNA into the proteins that are the building blocks of all their fundamental structures. A segment of DNA gets copied (“transcribed”) into a piece of mRNA, which in turn gets “read” by the cell’s tools for synthesising proteins.
Continue reading...Gag about former No 10 adviser tops TV channel Gold’s top 10 list of seasonal gags
Moments of light relief have been hard to come by this year but the annual ranking of topical Christmas cracker jokes provides some, with the top spot taken by one that has a punchline featuring a Chris Rea song and Dominic Cummings.
The TV channel Gold’s eighth annual ranking, which is chosen by a panel chaired by the comedy critic Bruce Dessau, was put to 2,000 voters who chose: “What is Dominic Cummings’ favourite Christmas song? Driving Home for Christmas”, as the best cracker joke this year.
Continue reading...The arrival of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine marks the ‘beginning of the end’ of the pandemic, the health secretary said, as hospitals across the country prepare to begin vaccinating the public on 8 December.
About 800,000 doses are expected to be available within the first week, with care home residents and carers, the over-80s and some health workers first to receive the shots
Continue reading...PM to make trip in 11th-hour effort to break impasse, raising hopes of a deal on trade and security
Boris Johnson will travel to Brussels for a face-to-face summit with the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, in an 11th-hour attempt to break the impasse in the Brexit negotiations.
A long-awaited crunch meeting will be held in the “coming days”, the two leaders said in a joint statement following a phone call lasting over an hour, keeping hopes alive of agreement on a trade and security deal. Sources on both sides pointed to Wednesday or Thursday as the most likely dates.
Continue reading...Paris’s concerns about UK demands are widely shared, analysts, politicians and EU diplomats say
Emmanuel Macron may be talking tougher than the rest of the EU27 as Brexit talks reach their endgame, but despite claims to the contrary in London and by a UK media that always enjoys pointing fingers across the Channel, France is far from isolated.
Headlines such as “Le bust-up” and “France derails Brexit talks” do not reflect European reality, analysts, politicians and EU diplomats have insisted, saying Paris’s fundamental concerns are widely shared across the EU27.
Continue reading...Latest updates: EU’s chief Brexit negotiator says gaps on level playing field, governance and fisheries are still not bridged
RTE’s Europe editor, Tony Connelly, has posted a thread on Twitter with the full comments from Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister, this morning.
Full remarks of Irish foreign min @simoncoveney to @rtenews this morning:
“Having heard from Michel Barnier this morning, really the news is very downbeat. I would say he is very gloomy, and obviously very cautious about the ability to make progress today.
2/ "There was news last night on some media sources that there was a breakthrough on fishing. That is absolutely not the case from what we’re hearing this morning,” he said.
Mr Coveney said that fisheries, the level playing field and governance remain “very problematic.”
3/ “There really was no progress made yesterday, that’s our understanding and so we’ve got to try to make a breakthrough at some point today, before the two principals, the Commission president and the prime minister speak later on this evening.
4/ “Unfortunately, I’d like to be giving more positive news, but at the moment these negotiations seem stalled, and the barriers to progress are still very much in place.
5/ “We haven’t, through the negotiating teams, found a way to find compromises that can progress these negotiations towards a successful conclusion.
6/ “There is still time. Lunchtime seems a long way away now, given the intensity of these discussions, but that’s where we are, and anyone who is briefing that there are breakthroughs in either of these two big areas...I don’t think is accurate.”
Continue reading...California confirmed record new cases on Sunday; South Korea expands testing amid case surge; Biden picks California Attorney General Becerra to lead pandemic response
The number of new Covid-19 infections per day in France is unlikely to fall to a 5,000 target by 15 December as the population is not sufficiently respecting social distancing measures, one of France*s top coronavirus experts said today.
Eric Caumes, head of infectious diseases at Paris hospital La Pitié-Salpêtrière, told LCI television that if the French are not cautious enough over Christmas and year-end holidays, it will lead to a third wave of the virus in mid-January.
It’s back to school today for some New York City schoolchildren, weeks after the schools were closed to in-person learning because of rising Covid-19 infections.
The city’s public school system, which shut down in-person learning earlier this month, will bring back preschool students and children in kindergarten through fifth grade, whose parents chose a mix of in-school and remote learning. Special education students in all grades who have particularly complex needs will be welcomed back starting Thursday.
We have facts now for two straight months of extraordinarily low levels of transmission in our schools, our schools are clearly safer. This is what our health care leaders say. Our schools are safer than pretty much any place else in New York City. So, I really think everyone in the school community can feel secure because so many measures are in place to protect everyone.
Revolt criticising policies on independence, economy and transgender rights could also see Alex Salmond return to party
Nicola Sturgeon faces a growing rebellion over her leadership style that is expected to involve Alex Salmond being readmitted to the Scottish National party next year.
More than 20 activists, councillors and MPs critical of Sturgeon’s leadership and her policies on independence, the economy and transgender rights were elected last week to the party’s national executive as office bearers and ruling committees, to the shock of party leaders.
Continue reading...IPPR North report reveals few signs of government’s levelling up agenda becoming reality
Covid-19 has deepened inequalities between the north and south of England, with little sign of the government’s “levelling up” agenda becoming a reality, a thinktank has warned, in an urgent “wake-up call” to Boris Johnson.
The north is experiencing levels of unemployment not seen since 1994, with areas put under the strictest tier 3 restrictions among the worst affected, IPPR North said in its annual health-check of the economy of the north of England.
Continue reading...Terms on access to UK waters all but finalised, but Franco-German demand over EU laws remains an obstacle
A major breakthrough has been made in Brexit negotiations on the rights of European fleets to fish in UK waters, EU sources said last night, leaving a Franco-German demand that Britain follow EU laws as the final hurdle to a historic trade and security deal.
Sources in Brussels said the two sides had all but finalised terms on the level of access for EU boats to seas within the UK’s 200-mile exclusive economic zone, with a transition period for phasing in changes understood to be between five and seven years.
Continue reading...Medical director warns of great hurdles in largest vaccination campaign in UK history
Batches of the Covid vaccine have begun to arrive in hospitals around the UK, ready for the first jabs on Tuesday in what NHS England’s medical director warned would be the largest and most complex vaccination campaign in the country’s history.
The UK’s record-breaking approval of the vaccine and the rapid start of immunisation against Covid-19 did not mean the end of the pandemic was in sight, said Prof Stephen Powis. It would be a marathon and not a sprint, he said.
Continue reading...Peers prepare to back cross-party move to block trade agreements with any country deemed to be committing genocide
Ministers face a double defeat in the Lords over Britain’s trading links with China as peers prepare to back a cross-party move to block trade agreements with any country deemed by the UK high court to be committing genocide.
The manoeuvre is in addition to Labour-led plans in the upper house to require a government human rights risk assessment before backing a Brexit trade deal.
Continue reading...Exclusive: call for wider scrutiny of stop and search, handcuffing and use of force, and even intelligence
New independent community panels in England and Wales should be given the power to inspect everything police do to root out bias, including their use of force and even where they deploy officers, under radical plans devised by a senior chief constable.
Assistant commissioner Rob Beckley, regarded as an expert on police and community relations, says the sweeping reforms would help law enforcement drag itself out of the race crisis engulfing it.
Continue reading...Auctioneer pieces together poignant tale of Ranavalona III from satin court dress and box of mementos
It began with a fabulous 19th-century dress and a box of jumbled photographs cleared out of a Guildford attic before a move to the country. It has resulted in being able to tell the true, poignant story of Ranavalona III, the last queen of Madagascar.
Ranavalona’s remarkable life of can be revealed thanks to the auction this week of personal effects unearthed by a descendent of Clara Herbert, who worked for the Madagascan royal family from the 1890s to the 1920s.
Continue reading...Statement on author’s official website says his views caused ‘lasting and understandable hurt’
The family of Roald Dahl has apologised for his antisemitism in a statement buried deep in the author’s official website.
Dahl, who died 30 years ago, is described on the site as “the world’s No 1 storyteller”, whose books – including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and The BFG – have entranced children since the 1960s.
Continue reading...We trace the extraordinary research effort, from the discovery of the virus’s structure to the start of inoculations this week
In the early afternoon of 3 January this year, a small metal box was delivered to the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre addressed to virus expert Prof Zhang Yongzhen. Inside, packed in dry ice, were swabs from a patient who was suffering from a novel, occasionally fatal respiratory illness that was sweeping the city of Wuhan. Exactly what was causing terrifying rises in case numbers, medical authorities wanted to know? And how was the disease being spread?
Related: ‘I worked so hard in the lab. I cried when the news came’
Continue reading...Britain’s credibility as climate champion rests on bold and urgent action, say campaigners
Britain must end all oil and gas extraction in the North Sea as a matter of urgency if it is to maintain its position as a credible climate champion. That was the stark warning issued by green campaigners yesterday in the wake of last week’s decision by Denmark to halt its exploration for new North Sea reserves as part of its commitment to cut carbon emissions and tackle climate change.
The Danish decision is an embarrassment for Boris Johnson who announced last week that Britain would take a lead in the battle against global heating by cutting national carbon emissions by 68% by 2030, a rate faster than any other major economy.
Continue reading...Singer should have been self-isolating after trip to Egypt when she celebrated birthday at London venue
British singer Rita Ora has apologised after reports emerged that she should have been self-isolating when she celebrated her birthday at a London restaurant last month.
The 30-year-old flew to Egypt in a private jet on 21 November to perform at the five-star W Hotel in Cairo, an appearance for which she was paid a six-figure sum, the Mail on Sunday reported.
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