Category Archives: UK news

Boris Johnson agrees to help father of Mercy Baguma’s child stay in UK

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PM pressed to help resolve asylum application for child’s father, who is now the boy’s sole carer

Boris Johnson has agreed to intervene in the case of Mercy Baguma, who was found dead in a flat in Glasgow two weeks ago next to her distressed one-year-old son.

Johnson was pressed by the Scottish National party MP David Linden at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday to arrange an urgent meeting with the home secretary to resolve the asylum application that has been pending for the child’s father, who is now the boy’s sole carer.

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Coronavirus live news: Oxford vaccine trial on hold; Czech Republic reports 1,000 new cases a day for first time

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AstraZeneca Plc and Oxford pause vaccine trial again; Czech Republic battles surging spread; China stages celebration of beating virus

In the US, Iowa’s governor, Kim Reynolds, is refusing to enforce a White House coronavirus taskforce recommendation to close bars and require people to wear masks after Covid-19 infections in some of the state’s cities surged.

Related: Iowa refuses to close bars and require masks as Covid-19 cases surge in cities

Russia’s sovereign wealth fund will sell 32m doses of the potential Covid-19 vaccine ‘Sputnik-V’ to a top pharmaceutical company in Mexico, Russia’s second vaccine export deal, a source close to the deal said on Wednesday.

Russia registered its first vaccine candidate, developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute, in August. Late-stage trials of Sputnik-V, due to involve 40,000 participants, were launched on 26 August.

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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe ‘held hostage’ by Iran, says husband

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UK government urged to attend trial on Sunday of British-Iranian dual national

Iran’s decision to press fresh charges against Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is illegal and shows she is being held as a hostage, her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, has said.

He called on the British government to do everything possible to protect her, include demanding UK officials are allowed to attend her trial on Sunday.

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Covid risks making society more unequal than since early Victorian times | Gabriel Scally

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As life expectancy stalls and infant mortality rises, abolishing Public Health England will only make things worse

In the midst of Covid-19 it is easy to forget that the country is facing not just one, but two, very badly managed public health emergencies. The substantial and largely avoidable death toll in the current epidemic is undoubtedly due to a series of ill-informed and inept decisions about how the country should respond to its greatest public health crisis in more than a century. But the virus’s task was undoubtedly made easier by a serious deterioration in the health of the population over the past decade.

Since the beginning of the 20th century life expectancy in England has improved consistently. Until the last decade that is. As a result of government policies over the last 10 years improvement in life expectancy has stalled, and for women in the most deprived areas it has actually fallen. The widening gap between life expectancy in the best-off and worst-off areas is now almost 10 years for men and seven and a half years in women. Similarly, the infant mortality rate for England and Wales reached its lowest point in 2014 and has been consistently higher ever since. Across a whole range of other public health indicators, such as drug-related deaths, sexually transmitted diseases and childhood immunisations, the position has been deteriorating.

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‘Hands. Face. Space’: UK government to relaunch Covid-19 slogan

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Ad campaign promoting hygiene and social distancing will run across TV, radio, print and more

A new government campaign is being launched to remind people to wash their hands, cover their faces and keep their distance, in a bid to keep infections down as the winter months approach.

With the slogan “Hands. Face. Space”, advertising will run across TV, radio, print, social and digital display advertising, as well as on community media channels, the Department of Health and Social Care has said.

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UK plans to change Brexit rules threaten US trade deal, top Democrats say

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Altering terms of withdrawal agreement on Northern Ireland could damage relations under Biden presidency

Senior Democrats have warned that any attempt by the UK government to backtrack on the Brexit agreement on Northern Ireland would jeopardize a future US-UK free trade deal and could hobble bilateral relations across the board if Joe Biden wins the presidency.

Biden, an Irish American, is a staunch defender of the Good Friday Agreement, of which the US is the guarantor, and which requires an open border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

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Coronavirus: gatherings of more than six to be banned in England

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Government will announce emergency action to strengthen rules and aid police enforcement

The government has announced emergency action to try to stem a feared autumn resurgence of coronavirus, tightening laws to ban virtually all gatherings of more than six people in England.

Amid concerns that the current rules are both widely misunderstood and too difficult for police to implement, Boris Johnson will hold a hastily arranged Downing Street press conference on Wednesday to outline the new restrictions.

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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe faces new charge, Iranian media reports

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State TV says British-Iranian dual national to appear in Tehran court on Sunday

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe will appear in an Iranian court on Sunday after the country’s state media said she faced a new and unspecified charge.

The news came as a bombshell to the family of the British-Iranian dual national, who has been under effective house arrest ever since the coronavirus outbreak led to her release from prison after serving nearly four of her of her five-year sentence.

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Government admits new Brexit bill ‘will break international law’

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Brandon Lewis tells MPs internal market bill will ‘clarify’ Northern Ireland protocol

The government has admitted that its plan to reinterpret the special Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland will break international law.

The Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, astonished backbenchers when he told the House of Commons: “Yes, this does break international law in a very specific and limited way. We’re taking the powers to disapply the EU law concept of direct effect … in a certain very tightly defined circumstance.”

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‘Significant flaws’ by police led to delays in treating Manchester Arena victims

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Inquiry into Ariana Grande concert attack to hear force did not declare major incident for three hours

Experts will tell an inquiry into the Manchester Arena bombing that “significant flaws” by police led to a series of devastating delays in tending to victims.

The public inquiry into the terrorist attack was told on Tuesday the force did not declare a major incident until three hours after Salman Abedi’s attack at the Ariana Grande concert that killed 22 people and injured 260.

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Shorter lifespan of faster-growing trees will add to climate crisis, study finds

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Rise in carbon capture as global warming speeds growth of forests would be negated by earlier deaths, say scientists

Live fast, die young is a truism often applied to rock stars but could just as easily describe trees, according to new research. Trees that grow rapidly have a shorter lifespan, which could spell bad news for tackling the climate crisis.

Trees grow faster in warmer conditions, and this should act as a natural brake on global heating, as they take up and store more carbon dioxide from the air as they grow. But the new study casts doubt on this beneficial cycle, finding that the faster trees grow, the sooner they die – and therefore stop storing carbon.

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No 10 could toughen Covid rules for social gatherings in England

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Restrictions could be reimposed amid claims people have ‘relaxed too much’

Downing Street is considering whether to reduce the maximum permitted size for social gatherings in England following a sudden rise in coronavirus cases, and warnings that people have “relaxed too much” in their precautions.

No 10 is looking at the current guidelines, which allow up to six people to meet outdoors, whether in a public outdoor space, or in a garden, or 30 if it is an event, to see whether the limits should be reduced, a source said.

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Coronavirus live news: France confirms 6,544 new infections; Spain reports 3,168 new daily cases

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Latest figures bring France’s total cases to 335,524 and Spain’s to 534,513; concerns over spread of virus in Greek migrant camps

The UK government response to the coronavirus pandemic is on track to cost £210bn for the first six months of the crisis, Whitehall’s spending watchdog has said.

Reflecting the scale of the emergency since March, the National Audit Office (NAO) said ministers had instigated more than 190 measures in response to the crisis so far, including emergency job support, additional NHS funding, and business grants.

Related: Coronavirus bill has cost UK government £210bn, spending watchdog says

Canada is seeing a worrying increase in the number of people infected with the coronavirus as schools across the country are starting to reopen, a top medical official has said.

Chief public health officer Theresa Tam said an average of 545 new cases had been reported daily over the last week, up from around 300 in July. She told a briefing:

This is concerning and I want to underscore that when cases occur, including in schools, it is a reflection on what’s happening in the community.

This week is a really critical week.

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Leaked EU cables reveal growing mistrust of UK in Brexit talks

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Brussels suspicions come as European commission chief warns Britain to abide by Northern Ireland protocol

Brussels’ plummeting trust in Boris Johnson has been laid bare in leaked diplomatic cables obtained by the Guardian, as the Brexit negotiations reopen in London with a warning from the European commission president that Britain must respect international law.

Ursula von der Leyen made her extraordinary intervention on Monday as Downing Street struggled to control the damage from disclosures suggesting it was backtracking on agreements made last year to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.

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Up to £3.5bn furlough scheme cash may have been wrongly paid out

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Error and fraud rate for scheme estimated at between 5% and 10%, says HMRC chief

The government believes it may have paid out up to £3.5bn in wrong or fraudulent claims for the furlough scheme.

Jim Harra, the top civil servant at HM Revenue & Customs, said that his staff had calculated for the possibility that as much as 10% of the money might have gone to the wrong places.

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Prince Harry pays back £2.4m for Frogmore Cottage renovation

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Duke of Sussex says he will keep the 18th-century house as his UK residence

The Duke of Sussex has paid back £2.4m of taxpayers’ money used to renovate Frogmore Cottage, his spokesperson has said.

Harry and Meghan’s official residence was gifted to them by the Queen but required extensive renovation to make it habitable for the couple and their son, Archie.

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Spain is first country in western Europe to record half a million Covid cases

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Experts fear that France and the UK will follow the country’s rapid rise in new infections

Spain has become the first western European country to record more than half a million Covid-19 cases, logging a total of 525,549 infections as concerns also grow over the rise in cases in France and the UK.

The Spanish milestone comes amid a continuing surge in infections as millions of children begin returning to school after a six-month hiatus.

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Coronavirus cases rise steeply among young people in England

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Rates growing fastest among those aged 10-29, and decreasing in the older age groups

The health secretary, Matt Hancock, implored young people to stick to the rules as Covid-19 infections in the UK rose to their highest levels since early May.

It is not known why case rates are higher among young people, but England-level data shows they are rising steeply.

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