Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Giuseppe Conte under pressure from Italian exporters to ensure favourable outcome on withdrawal agreement
Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, has urged the British government to come good on a Brexit deal but admitted it was currently “difficult to feel optimistic” amid legal wrangling over the withdrawal agreement.
“Obviously the legislative move in the UK creates tension,” said Conte, referring to Boris Johnson’s tabling of a bill that violates key elements of the agreement reached with Brussels last year.
Exclusive: majorities in seven countries favour Joe Biden and rate Donald Trump poorly
Fewer than one in 10 Europeans expect next month’s US presidential election to be completely free and fair, and an overwhelming majority say they would like Joe Biden to triumph over Donald Trump.
According to a YouGov tracker survey in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden, in only one of these countries – Italy – are more than a tenth of voters confident that the American electoral process will prove irreproachable.
France sees record cases; one in seven people tested in Belgian capital is positive; Trump returns to Oval Office against CDC’s isolation guidelines. Follow the latest updates
The coronavirus outbreak has infected “34 White House staffers and other contacts” in recent days, according to an internal government memo, an indication that the disease has spread among more people than previous known in the seat of American government.
Dated Wednesday and obtained by ABC News, the memo was distributed among senior leadership at FEMA, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security and the agency responsible for managing the continuing national response to the public health disaster.
British airline easyJet said it will open a new base in Faro, the main city in Portugal’s popular Algarve tourist region, which has been hammered by the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Joao Lopes, easyJet’s executive director in Portugal, told reporters the airline would allocate three aircraft to Faro next year, making it the company’s third base in the country. It already has bases in Lisbon and Porto.
The US president, Donald Trump, said talks with Congress have restarted over further Covid-19 relief and that there was a good chance a deal could be reached, but gave no other details about a possible agreement.
“Now they are starting to work out,” he told Fox in a telephone interview, after previous statements via his Twitter account earlier this week that he had cut off negotiations.
Living standards have plunged for some of the UK’s poorest families during the coronavirus pandemic, with over a third reporting they are financially even worse off since lockdown, according to Save the Children.
The charity’s survey of households on universal credit or working tax credits found nearly two-thirds had run up debts over the past two months, 60% had cut down on food and other basics, and over a third had relied on charities for food and clothes.
It amounts to an indictment of Isis, the brutal terror organisation that drew murderous strength from adherents who came from around the world, and its dead leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Labour leader speaks after union reportedly moved to cut its contributions to party
Keir Starmer has said he has a “very good relationship” with the Unite boss, Len McCluskey, after the union moved to cut its affiliation money to the Labour party.
McCluskey, who was a strong supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, first ordered a review into Unite’s contributions in August following Starmer’s decision to pay damages to former party staff who became whistleblowers over antisemitism.
Mohammed bin Nayef and Ahmed bin Abdulaziz have not been seen in public since March
A group of MPs and lawyers have asked to visit Saudi Arabia to discover the fate of two high-profile Saudi princes, the former crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef and Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz.
The panel has been set up to investigate and report on the detention of the princes as well as other key political figures detained in the region. The princes have reportedly been denied legal advice, medical care and contact with their family since they disappeared in March.
UK prepared to retain act in order to secure security ties with EU, sources say
Boris Johnson is prepared to make a major compromise to secure security ties with the EU by pledging in a deal on the future relationship not to rip up the Human Rights Act.
The UK is said by EU sources to be “moving” in negotiations on the issue in Brussels after previously insisting that the government would not tie its hands in any agreement on the future relationship.
Boris Johnson has always been weak at PMQs, but mostly that has primarily come over as a performance problem. Today he was a bit stronger than usual performance-wise, but it was obvious that, even if he possessed the parliamentary oratorical brilliance of someone like William Hague, he would have failed to have come out on top because he’s handicapped by a fundamental policy problem; he is trying to defend a Covid strategy that just isn’t working.
Sir Keir Starmer highlighted this best in his fourth question. He asked:
In Bury, when restriction were introduced, the infection rate was around 20 per 100,000. Today it’s 266. In Burnley it was 21 per 100,000 when restriction were introduced. Now it’s 434. In Bolton it was 18 per 100,000. Now it’s 255. The prime minister really needs to understand that local communities are angry and frustrated. So will he level with the people of Bury, Burnley and Bolton and tell them, what does he actually think the problem is here?
In the prime minister’s own local authority Hillingdon, today there are 62 cases per 100,000 yet no local restrictions. But in 20 local areas across England, restrictions were imposed when infection rates were much lower. In Kirklees it was just 29 per 100,000. Local communities, prime minister, genuinely don’t understand these differences. Can he please explain for them?
For the prime minister’s benefit, let me take this slowly for him. We support measures to protect health. We want track and trace to work. But the government is messing it up and it’s our duty to point it out.
Taiwo Owatemi (Lab) says Coventry is running out of brownfield sites. So where will the new homes it needs be built?
Johnson says there is abundant brownfield space all over the country. He says as the former planning authority for London, he knows. He says rules are making building difficult. He will turn generation rent into generation buy.
Simon Coveney says talks will not progress without signal that UK is ready to show some realism
The EU’s Michel Barnier will not move Brexit talks into the so-called “tunnel” of more intense negotiations “unless he gets a very clear signal from the UK that they are willing to show some flexibility and realism” in its approach to a deal, Ireland’s foreign affairs minister has said.
Simon Coveney, who played a significant role in the first three years of talks, also said the talks would blow up completely if the UK went ahead with clauses in the yet-to-be-tabled finance bill giving ministers unilateral powers over the Northern Ireland protocol for a second time.
The European Commission has agreed with US company Gilead to buy additional doses of its Covid-19 drug Remdesivir to treat about 3,400 patients, amid shortages of the medication in Europe.
A spokesman for the EU executive said Brussels agreed with Gilead last Friday to supply nearly 20,300 additional doses “which help almost 3,400 patients” at a cost of €7m ($8.24m). That is in addition to 30,000 courses of treatment it bought at the end of July.
For White House staff and senior visiting officials and journalists, thecoronavirus outbreak in Donald Trump’s inner circle has become like a whodunnit amid a shortage of information and mounting anxiety.
As cleaners in hazmat suits have been pictured disinfecting areas – including briefing rooms and the White House press and communications “shop” where three staff have been infected – the questions now being asked are: who caught Covid from whom and when and where? And who might be next?
They may be a common sight, but privately owned motorised scooters are still illegal on Britain’s roads and pavements. But with rental scheme trials taking place across the country, could they be answer to getting to work in the pandemic?
Standing upright, you glide, ghostlike, along the street. You have no emissions. You are alone, outside, unlikely to catch anything or pass anything on. You are no burden to the public transport system, nor do you contribute much to congestion. You take up little space.
Now you join a busier road, one with buses. Perhaps you feel small, vulnerable. But when the traffic bunches up and stops, you can pass. Ha! This is the future of urban travel, isn’t it? Make that the present: it is here, you are here, going somewhere else quickly, with a smile. You are also breaking the law.
RBKC used ‘decisive influence’ to remove original contractor over budget concerns
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) used “decisive influence” to remove the original contractor on Grenfell Tower despite its claims to have delegated responsibility for the works, the public inquiry into the disaster has heard.
In evidence that places the Conservative-controlled council at the heart of a key decision in the run up to the June 2017 fire, the inquiry was told that Laura Johnson, RBKC’s director of housing, lost patience with Leadbitter when it said the project was going to cost £1.2m more than the budget.
Boris Johnson claimed the “ructions” of the Covid pandemic can pave the way for a transformation akin to the “new Jerusalem” pledged by the postwar cabinet as he sought to restore Tory morale with an upbeat party conference speech.
With Keir Starmer’s Labour party gaining in the polls, and mounting disquiet among colleagues over Johnson’s handling of the pandemic, the prime minister used his set-piece speech to set out an optimistic vision of change.
Exclusive: if discovery is confirmed it will have global implications as 90% of people breathe dirty air
Tiny air pollution particles have been revealed in the brain stems of young people and are intimately associated with molecular damage linked to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
If the groundbreaking discovery is confirmed by future research, it would have worldwide implications because 90% of the global population live with unsafe air. Medical experts are cautious about the findings and said that while the nanoparticles are a likely cause of the damage, whether this leads to disease later in life remains to be seen.
Reuters reports that US cruise operator Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd has extended suspension of sailings until 30 November, excluding those originating from Hong Kong, as the Covid-19 crisis continues to hurt the demand for voyages.
The company said its cruise brand Celebrity Cruises will suspend its 2020-21 winter program in Australia and Asia, while its Azamara cruises will suspend winter sailings throughout Australia and New Zealand, South Africa and South America.
The US Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden tested negative for Covid-19 in a test conducted on Tuesday, his campaign said in a statement.
Loophole allowing marriage with parental consent undermines UK’s global stance on child marriage, parliament to be told
The UK is undermining its international efforts to end child marriage because an exception to the law in England and Wales that allows 16 and 17-year-olds to marry with parental consent is putting children at risk, parliament will be told today.
Pauline Latham MP will ask the House to back a bill criminalising child marriage and civil partnership before the age of 18. She will argue that current legislation is at odds with the legal requirement since 2013 for young people to remain in education or training until then.
Solicitors and barristers say they feel unsafe and warn Home Office attacks on lawyers are undermining the legal system
Leading immigration lawyers have told the Guardian that increasingly hostile rhetoric from the home secretary is putting them at risk of being attacked as well as undermining the legal system.
On Sunday home secretary Priti Patel used a speech at the Conservative party conference to criticise lawyers who defend migrants, linking them directly with traffickers who help asylum-seekers to cross borders.