Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has urged his party to learn from Joe Biden’s “broad coalition” which won back voters who turned away from the Democrats four years ago, pointing to the president-elect’s emphasis on “family, community and security”.
Starmer, an enthusiastic supporter of Biden’s bid who shares a WhatsApp group with his staff called “Let’s Go Joe”, said the victory of the former vice-president and his running mate Kamala Harris would “fill the void in global leadership” and was a vote “for a better, more optimistic future”.
Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping stay silent while Iran waits to see how US will compensate for Trump sanctions
Most world leaders rushed to congratulate Joe Biden on his election, but Russia and China, two likely losers from the defeat of Donald Trump, remained silent, perhaps waiting for the outgoing president to concede defeat.
The president of the Maldives, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, is thought to be the first to have congratulated Biden, tweeting his welcome within 24 minutes of the US networks declaring Biden victorious. By contrast, Vladimir Putin, accused of collusion in Trump’s 2016 victory, and Xi Jinping kept their counsel.
Prime minister says changes to legislation will protect Northern Ireland peace deal
Boris Johnson has risked opening a rift with the US president-elect, Joe Biden, by insisting the internal markets bill that reneges on part of the EU withdrawal agreement would go ahead as planned.
The prime minister said the legislation would go through parliament and added that the planned changes, which would hand unilateral power to ministers to change or disapply export rules for goods traveling from Britain to Northern Ireland, would protect the Good Friday peace deal.
Ancient artefacts will be lost when tunnel for A303 is built near site, campaigners claim
It has been bitterly debated for the past three decades, but the latest plans to partly bury the A303 in a tunnel beside Stonehenge may this week finally get approval from transport secretary Grant Shapps.
The £2.4bn scheme – which will see the traffic-choked road to the west country widened into a dual carriageway near the ancient site before shooting down a two-mile tunnel – has pitted archaeologists, local campaigners and even the nation’s druids against the combined might of Highways England, English Heritage and the National Trust.
‘Large differences remain’ after call between Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen
The Brexit negotiations remained stuck after a call between Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen before a decisive week of talks.
The European commission president and the prime minister both highlighted in their post-call statements the contentious issues of EU access to British waters and agreement on future rules to ensure fair competition.
The government faces renewed calls for the central NHS test and trace system to be scrapped in favour of handing responsibility for contact tracing to local public health teams.
Weekly test and trace figures for England show it reached just under 60% of close contacts of people testing positive, the lowest since the service began. It comes as the Office for National Statistics indicated the steep rise in new infections was levelling off in England and stabilising at about 50,000 a day.
Phonecall with Ursula von der Leyen could be final chance for PM to avert no-deal Brexit
Boris Johnson and the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, will hold talks on Saturday before a potentially decisive week in the Brexit negotiations, amid growing concern in Brussels at the lack of progress.
UK sources played down expectations of a breakthrough moment but with time short for parliamentary ratification the phonecall may prove to be the final chance for a political intervention in the troubled talks.
A coronavirus passport app promoted by the Olympian Zara Tindall has been reported to a health regulator over concerns it is mis-selling antibody tests.
The V-Health Passport was touted as a “game changer” to get sports fans back into stadiums and major events. It involves spectators getting a rapid antibody test prior to attending an event, with results uploaded on a health passport on an app.
In the advert, Zara and Mike Tindall were being told they don’t have the virus – you can’t say that. This could do harm, with people getting into sporting events with negative results while they are infectious.
I have no problem with the app, it’s the use of the app. A lot of health professionals have seen it with their head in their hands.
Some schools may be sending children home “too readily” amid the pandemic, the chief inspector of Ofsted has said.
Parents of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) have been told that schools cannot accommodate their children due to Covid-19 risk assessments, according to Amanda Spielman.
And here, many parents haven’t made an active decision to keep their child at home – they’ve been told that schools can’t accommodate them. Because it’s too difficult, because Covid risk assessments won’t allow it. It’s deeply concerning and, understandably, many parents feel cut adrift.
For the children with SEND that have been able to get back into education, it hasn’t been plain sailing either. We’re hearing that many have suffered setbacks in their communication skills – probably down to having reduced social interaction for such a long time.
The UK Statistics Authority has rebuked the government over its lack of transparency around projected Covid-19 deaths and hospital admissions, saying it could cast doubt over official figures.
A range of estimates were used to make the case for a second English lockdown in a press conference on 31 October. However, the UKSA said “the data and assumptions for this model had not been shared transparently”, potentially undermining confidence in official figures.
The UK’s first mass-testing trial is under way in Liverpool as part of the government’s Operation Moonshot drive to test up to 10 million people a day.
Six new testing centres opened their doors to Liverpudlians at noon on Friday as the city’s health chief urged the city’s 500,000-strong population to volunteer for a coronavirus test over the next fortnight.
The chancellor has announced that the government will extend the UK's furlough scheme until March as the second wave of Covid-19 infections and new lockdown threaten to push up unemployment. In a major climbdown, Rishi Sunak said the Treasury would continue to pay 80% of workers’ wages
The UK should be braced for at least a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic and further lockdowns, a minister has said as Tory sceptics warned they would not vote to extend England’s four-week shutdown.
Penny Mordaunt, the paymaster general, told MPs on Tuesday that there could yet be a rolling series of lockdowns – but argued this was not evidence that the measure was ineffective.
Head of undercover policing inquiry says he expects to be told if practice is continuing
The head of the inquiry into undercover policing has insisted that Scotland Yard reveal whether it is currently deploying spies in political groups.
The surprise intervention from Sir John Mitting came on the second day of public hearings in the inquiry into spying operations that targeted mostly leftwing groups for at least four decades.
The government has published the full regulations for England’s second national lockdown, which is to begin on Thursday and will last for four weeks. A number of details had already emerged, and some are sufficiently complex to have puzzled even ministers.
Up to half a million people in Liverpool are set to be tested for Covid-19 under the UK government’s first attempt to embark on city-wide mass testing and track down every case of the virus.
The Guardian also understands that the self-isolation period for those who test positive for coronavirus, and their contacts, could be cut from the current 14-day period to seven days as early as this week.
Ruth Davidson, the former Scottish Conservative leader, and current Tory leader in the Scottish parliament, is confident that Boris Johnson was making a concession to Scotland (and the other devolved administrations too, presumably) on furlough. See 5.34pm.
Under questioning from @Douglas4Moray, PM gives reassurance that furlough is available to devolved administrations now and in the future https://t.co/2aE8rEtEDj
In the Commons Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, asked if Scotland could access the furlough scheme beyond November.
Johnson said the furlough scheme was a UK-wide scheme.
As England braces for a second national lockdown, Downing Street once more faces a rebellion over tougher restrictions. Ahead of a Commons vote on Wednesday, several Conservative MPs are weighing up their options. Here are some key figures who may line up against the government and the broad camps they sit in, alongside Nigel Farage and his plan for a new anti-lockdown party.
Boris Johnson will insist there is “no alternative” to a nationwide lockdown as he addresses the House of Commons on Monday amid mounting fury among Tory MPs, after ministers conceded the new “stay at home” order could be extended beyond 2 December.
The prime minister will tell parliament that without the draconian new measures, which will come into force across England on Thursday, deaths from coronavirus over the winter could be “twice as bad or even worse” than in the first wave.
The drowning of a family of five in the Channel and a fire on a ship off the coast of Senegal should prompt action – ‘thoughts and prayers’ are not enough
“We don’t see migration as a problem at all: we see people dying at sea as a problem and the existence of the mafias as a problem.” Such was the view expressed last week by Hana Jalloul, secretary of state for migration in Spain. Days earlier, more than 140 people had died off the coast of Senegal, after their ship caught fire and capsized, in the deadliest shipwreck recorded this year. Ms Jalloul spoke of efforts to support the regional government of the Canary Islands, which is struggling to cope with the number of arrivals, and stressed her determination to combat organised crime. She also pointed to migrants’ crucial role in Spanish life, including as care workers during the pandemic.
British politicians could profit from studying her example in the aftermath of the drowning of a family of four Kurdish Iranians in the Channel. (A fifth member of the same family, aged 15 months, is missing and presumed dead.) Reports of the deaths of Rasul Iran Nezhad, Shiva Mohammad Panahi and their children drew forth platitudes from the home secretary, Priti Patel, about “thoughts and prayers”. But nothing said by her or Boris Johnson did anything to dispel the impression that their attitude to people trying to reach the UK to seek asylum is chiefly antagonistic. While Ms Patel repeated her opposition to “callous criminals exploiting vulnerable people”, there was no serious attempt to sympathise with the migrants’ desperation – or acknowledge that their reliance on smugglers is a matter not of accident but of political choice.