Lockdown fears for Birmingham amid sharp rise in UK coronavirus cases

City sees ‘extremely concerning’ rise to 30 cases per 100,000 as positive tests in Britain hit highest level since mid-June

Police and officials in Birmingham have warned the public to act now to avert a city-wide lockdown as the number of people testing positive for coronavirus in England rose 27% in a week, hitting its highest level since mid-June.

The UK’s second city, which has a population of more than 1 million, has seen a rise to 30 cases per 100,000 up from 22.4 the week before and 12 at the start of the month, its director of public health said.

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Manchester Covid outbreak ‘a warning to complacent white middle class’

Exclusive: health chief says declaration of major incident shows spread not just in BAME groups

The declaration of a major incident in Greater Manchester should jolt a “complacent white middle class” into realising that Covid-19 is not just spreading in ethnic minority households, one of the region’s health chiefs has said.

Eleanor Roaf, the director of public health in Trafford, said 80% of its infections in the last week were in the white community, and she urged the region’s 2.8 million residents to concentrate “much harder on what we can do to stop the wider spread”.

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Expect more lockdowns until low-paid workers are able to isolate without fear of poverty

Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham warns that dramatically shifting pictures of infection rates will continue to force local lockdowns

Last week we got a taste of things to come. As we head for winter without a Covid-19 vaccine, we will all need to get used to a new routine where, every Thursday, the latest round of local restrictions is announced. Greater Manchester was not the first and we certainly won’t be the last.

When the secretary of state for health called late on Thursday afternoon to inform me of his intentions, I was not surprised.

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What are the new lockdown rules in northern England?

All you need to know about the updated coronavirus measures affecting more than 4m people

More than 4 million people across swathes of northern England were given less than three hours’ notice on Thursday night that they must endure tighter lockdown restrictions to stem a resurgence of Covid-19 cases.

But what what exactly do the new measures mean for those living in affected areas in the north and elsewhere in England?

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Labour abuses happening ‘at scale’ far beyond Leicester, warn rights groups

Exploitation occurring in UK farming, construction, contract cleaning, fishing, recycling and domestic work, say labour organisations

The labour abuses and sweatshop conditions reported in factories in Leicester are occurring “at scale” across the UK’s garment, manufacturing and farming industries, campaigners warn.

Reports of similar exploitative conditions and labour abuses alleged to be occurring in Leicester have also been linked to garment factories in Birmingham, Manchester and London, among other places.

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North-west overtakes London for number of Covid-19 hospital cases

Latest figures reveal English regional differences in spread and peak of coronavirus

More people are in hospital with coronavirus in the north-west of England than in London, as regional differences in the spread and peak of the pandemic become increasingly apparent.

Latest figures show 2,033 people in London hospitals compared to 2,191 in the north-west, where the peak for hospitalisation appears to have been on 13 April, compared to 8 April in the capital.

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Manchester cycle network plan could be national blueprint, says Burnham

Mayor urges backing as report sets out predicted gains from walking and cycling scheme

A joined-up cycling and walking network in Greater Manchester could provide a national blueprint for reducing congestion and air pollution and improving health, a report says.

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, and Chris Boardman, the region’s cycling and walking commissioner, are calling on the government to back plans for an 1,800-mile network of protected routes for pedestrians and cyclists.

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Reynhard Sinaga victim: ‘I thought I might have killed him’

Student fought back after waking during assault and was treated by police as a suspect

The student who exposed the serial rapist Reynhard Sinaga has said he feared he had killed him after he woke and fought back when he found he was being abused.

Sinaga, 36, was jailed this month for a minimum of 30 years for 136 rapes against dozens of young men in Manchester. Police believe he would have carried on offending had one of his victims not woken up during an attack and called 999.

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Reynhard Sinaga may have been raping men as far back as 2005

Photos, videos and ‘trophy items’ suggest ‘Britain’s worst ever rapist’ attacked 195 men between 2005 and 2017

Police in Manchester believe the PhD student dubbed “Britain’s worst ever rapist” may have attacked men as far back as 2005 – and have admitted he called them at least twice to help evict men from his flat.

Reynhard Sinaga, 36, from Indonesia, posed as a “good Samaritan” outside clubs in central Manchester, inviting men back to his flat for a drink or to charge their phones, before slipping the date rape drug gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) into their drink. He then recorded himself raping them, sometimes for hours at a time.

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Exclusive: CPS seeks longer sentence for rapist Reynhard Sinaga

Crown Prosecution Service asks attorney general to review 30-year term for student who raped up to 195 men

A man described as Britain’s most prolific rapist could have his sentence increased after the Crown Prosecution Service wrote to the attorney general saying Reynhard Sinaga should serve longer than 30 years in prison.

Sinaga, a 36-year-old mature student from Indonesia, was given a life sentence with a minimum tariff of 30 years by a judge at Manchester crown court last week. Suzanne Goddard QC told him it was “borderline” whether he should be given a whole-life term but decided that he should not be considered for release until he was 66, having been unanimously convicted by four juries of drugging and abusing 48 men while they lay comatose in his Manchester flat.

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Mother of UK’s worst serial rapist ‘didn’t know he was gay’

We are a good Christian family, says Normawati Sinaga. ‘He is my baby’

The mother of a mature student described as “Britain’s most prolific rapist” says she did not know he was gay.

Reynhard Sinaga was sentenced to life with a minimum of 30 years last week after being found guilty of attacking 48 men in Manchester. Videos he recorded on two iPhones suggest that he attacked at least 195 men while they lay comatose in his city centre flat, having spiked their drinks with a date rape drug.

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Reynhard Sinaga jailed for life for raping dozens of men in Manchester

Reynhard Sinaga is believed to have lured nearly 200 victims to his flat and attacked them

A man described as “Britain’s most prolific rapist” will never be safe to be released, a court has heard, as he was jailed for a minimum of 30 years after being found guilty of raping or sexually assaulting 48 young men in Manchester.

Reynhard Sinaga, 36, a mature student from Indonesia, is thought by police to have abused at least 195 men over two-and-a-half years after luring them to his flat under the guise of being a “good samaritan”, drugging his victims and then attacking them after they passed out.

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New boiler, £0? The plumber, hairdresser and beautician who work for free

Haircuts for rough sleepers. Beauty treatments for cancer patients. Boilers for disabled people. A wave of specialists are providing skills – and hope – for those in need

Goodwill, it appears, is in high demand. One thing all the altruists I met while researching this article have in common is that they’re on the phone the whole time. Perhaps if mobiles had been around in Robin Hood’s day he would have had one pressed constantly to his lughole. “Marion … yes, love. I’m just having a fight on a bridge with Little John … sorry, you’re breaking up, terrible reception in here, all the oaks... What, the Sheriff’s abducted you? OK, I’m coming!”

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Public invited to 100-year-old Jamaican war veteran’s funeral

Oswald Dixon served in RAF in second world war and died at care home in Salford

A care home is inviting members of the public to attend the funeral of a second world war veteran from Jamaica with no family in the UK.

Oswald Dixon died on 25 September aged 100 after living his last four years at a home for retired service personnel in Salford, Greater Manchester.

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Jet2 plane diverted to Porto after pilot falls ill at the controls

Flight from Manchester to Madeira rerouted amid reports a passenger assisted landing

A pilot fell ill at the controls of an aeroplane flying from Manchester to the Atlantic island of Madeira, forcing the flight to be diverted to northern Portugal.

The airline, Jet2, confirmed that the aircraft had to land in Porto on Monday, adding that a replacement aircraft and crew had been dispatched to get passengers to their proper destination.

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‘Several lives lost’: note reveals early details of Peterloo massacre

Magistrate’s message released to mark 200th anniversary may be first account of bloodshed

It was a defining moment in British political history, paving the way in the long struggle for democratic representation of the disenfranchised working classes.

Now, 200 years on from the Peterloo massacre in which peaceful protesters were cut down by sabre-wielding cavalry, a hastily scribbled note has been unearthed to reveal what could be the first account of the bloodshed.

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Public re-enactment to mark 200th anniversary of Peterloo massacre

Free tickets issued on Thursday for 16 August event including 3,000 members of the public

More than 3,000 members of the public will play a part in marking the Peterloo massacre on the 200th anniversary of the bloody protest for parliamentary reform and political representation at St Peter’s Field in Manchester.

There will be no passive spectators at From the Crowd, an immersive experience which will weave together eyewitness accounts of those present at Peterloo in 1819 and the words of contemporary protesters and poets.

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‘People think I’m very odd’: how Ibrahim Mahama brought Ghana’s past to Manchester

From second-hand train seats to old school cupboards, the artist has transported discarded objects from his west African homeland to create a ‘parliament of ghosts’

‘We’re haunted all the time by ghosts of the past,” says Ibrahim Mahama as we sit on dirty old plastic second-class Ghana Railways carriage seats in Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery. Even these seats from an abandoned railway? “Especially these,” he says, smiling.

Mahama, a junkyard utopian whose art involves recycling stuff that’s lost its purpose, bought up rows and rows of these seats. He packed them into shipping containers and sent them on a 5,000-mile trip, from his west African homeland to the Whitworth, along with some school cupboards no longer fit for purpose, exercise books of children now grown up, and the minutes of Ghanaian parliamentary debates now deemed obsolete.

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Nico in Manchester: ‘She loved the architecture – and the heroin’

She had been a top model, then sang with the Velvet Underground, and in 1981 Nico moved to Manchester. Her friends there share their touching, alarming memories of ‘a true bohemian’

An imperious blond German ex-model with a voice once described as like “a body falling through a window”, Nico was already extraordinary by the time she leant her vocals to songs including Femme Fatale and All Tomorrow’s Parties on the Velvet Underground’s classic first album, produced by Andy Warhol.

Soon after that, she embarked on a solo career, and made records, such as The Marble Index, that were even darker, with despairing lyrics and a wheezing harmonium accompanying Nico’s Teutonic tones. By this time, she was no longer blond – she disdained her traffic-stopping looks – and was addicted to heroin.

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Northern’s Pacer trains to run into 2020 despite retirement pledge

Rail firm privately backtracks on vow to MPs that fleet would be retired by end of year

Northern rail promised MPs last week its fleet of hated “buses-on-rails” would be retired by the end of the year, but it has emerged the firm had already privately warned the transport secretary it might have to keep some of them in service well into 2020.

Rob Warnes, the rail firm’s network planning director, told the all-party parliamentary group (AAPG) on rail in the north that all of its antiquated fleet of Pacers would be gone by the end of the year, according to Ian Mearns, the Labour MP who chairs the AAPG.

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